Prom – review

If you're looking for a DVD for your tweenie sleepover, then here is the movie for you: a bland, Disney drama about all the heartache and craziness leading up to a high school graduation prom night. This movie flagrantly disregards the honourable Hollywood tradition of portraying prom night as an unspeakable ordeal, and instead treats the subject with saucer-eyed solemnity. It's entirely without the irony and savvy that we're used to from high- school movies. Here there's a distinct lack of, well, glee. Aimee Teegarden plays Nova, the lonely, hard-working high-school senior who is in charge of organising the prom and, oh irony, she doesn't have a date. Thomas McDonell (a bit of a Keanu soundalike) plays Jesse, the motorbike-riding bad boy who hates prom but is ordered to help out as a punishment. And so the mysterious romantic chemistry starts fizzing. The whole thing is slickly put together, but in stripping out the cynicism, they've stripped out the romance too.