From the Walt Disney Company’s wholesome-produce department, the pleasantly retro teen movie Prom comes bearing no offense. Which is nice for parents seeking healthy alternatives to, say, Glee or, worse, Pretty Little Liars — if slightly worrying to those of us who grew up on the necessity of youthful rebellion.
Directed by Joe Nussbaum (Sleepover) from a chipper screenplay by Katie Wech, Prom is a good-hearted, perfectly watchable bonbon about adolescents with little on their minds besides who will ask or be asked to the graduation night shindig.
Nussbaum has claimed a cinematic affinity with John Hughes, but Prom‘s sensibility is less Ferris Bueller‘s Day Off than pale Pretty in Pink updated with a perky High School Musical vibe. (Though minus the hoofing; instead there’s a broadly winking soundtrack featuring Those Dancing Days and Simple Plan.)
By way of technique, a split screen here and there helps set up the few personality traits shared by all 14 members of the ensemble — dewy novice actors so blandly photogenic that they all look vaguely familiar.
At the center of this tray of sweets, which includes the usual fly boy, several shy boys, a high-flying Asian girl and a dignified African-American prom queen, is a developing romance between a good girl who needs to let her hair down and a bad boy who needs to cut his — I mean, who needs to straighten up.