The Prom movie review: Ryan Murphy’s inconsistent musical

With a seriously A-list cast and shiny production values, this should’ve been a much better movie. And the weakest link is obvious.

There’s a lot of kerfuffle over James Corden’s performance as a flamboyant theatre star in Netflix movie The Prom.

Some have called the portrayal by Corden, who’s straight and playing a gay character, “offensive” and “gross”. While there’s certainly arguments to be made for both sides of whether straight actors should play gay, the overriding problem with what’s happening in The Prom is Corden is just not a strong enough actor.

He’s charismatic to be sure. A likeable host, presenter and comedic performer. A great singer with an impressive pair of pipes. But there’s nothing in Corden’s resume that suggested he was the right choice for a role that required much more nuance and sensitivity than the melodrama he mustered.

In the wildly inconsistent The Prom, Corden’s storyline is by far the weakest and cringiest, but it’s not the only problem.

A glitzy, bold and unapologetically broad musical, The Prom is the first feature out of producer Ryan Murphy’s enormous Netflix deal. It’s also the first movie Murphy has directed in a decade – the last was Eat Pray Love.

The Prom features an A-list cast.

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Adapted from a recent Broadway musical, The Prom is centred on a teenage girl, Emma (newcomer Jo Ellen Pellman), who has essentially been banned from her school prom by a “traditional values” PTA board run by parent Mrs Greene (Kerry Washington).

Emma’s crime? That she’s a lesbian in a small Indiana town.

Broadway stars Dee Dee Allen (Meryl Streep), Barry Glickman (Corden), Angie Dickinson (Nicole Kidman) and Trent Oliver (Andrew Rannells) are down on their luck and looking for a cause celeb to revive their fortunes through good publicity.

It’s a cynical ploy and they blow into Emma’s town with all the bluster of a circus, full of derision for its supposedly bigoted citizens – except the supportive school principal played by Keegan-Michael Key.

As an aside, while having never been to Indiana, I was surprised that The Prom was set in 2020 because it felt very odd that even small-town Americana would have only one out gay kid in the whole school and that every other young person was homophobic. Maybe that’s really what’s happening in suburban Indiana but it bumps nonetheless.

The Prom is a big musical where its cast’s names are literally splashed in lights in the opening credits. It wears its heart on its sleeve and features many toe-tapping musical set pieces, many of which are carried out with pizzazz and spirit.

Of the main star cast, Rannells, who originated the role of Elder Price on Broadway for Book of Mormon, is the most at-home with the material and really sells it in a shopping centre number that basically solves homophobia.

And that’s the other problem with The Prom – everything ends up being so simple. Perhaps that’s the convention of many musicals in which a song and a dance fixes complex issues, but The Prom takes giant leaps (literally and metaphorically) in its story progression without earning it.

Perhaps it’s hoping that while you’re distracted by the razzle dazzle, you won’t notice that it doesn’t flow that well, the tone shifts are clunky or that it’s at least 25 minutes too long.

Jo Ellen Pellman and Ariana DeBose are the real stars of The Prom. Melinda Sue Gordon/Netflix

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Like much of Murphy’s work, especially everything he’s made for Netflix where it appears he has few creative limits from the streamer, The Prom’s inconsistency means that where there is bad, there is also good.

That good is a bright, shining spotlight: the young couple at the heart of the story, Emma and Alyssa (Ariana DeBose).

Pellman as Emma is truly a discovery. Her warm, big-hearted screen presence lights everything up more than The Prom’s rainbow-coloured production design can. Pellman’s vocal skills are so strong and she has an irrepressible Drew Barrymore quality in that you want everything in the world for her.

Pellman and DeBose are the heart of The Prom and whenever they’re on screen, it’s enough to forget everything else in this movie exists – at least for a spell.

The Prom raises questions about the phenomenon of celebrities hijacking causes, sometimes making it worse, but it’s never really interested in properly delving into it.

So thank god the real focus is not on the bigger names in the cast but on the luminous younger cast who make The Prom at least half-watchable.

Rating: 2.5/5

The Prom is on Netflix from Friday, December 11 at 7pm AEDT

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