If Disney's live-action films are good for anything, it's their ability to melt even the harshest cynics cold exterior and make them smile. While make you smile it will, that smile will most likely be accompanied by a constant stream of wise cracks you won't be able to stop yourself from making all throughout. Still, a teeny bopper film like this could do way worse than a smile paired with an eye roll, so color me content.
Prom follows a group of likable (and endlessly pure) high school students as they prepare for prom in the weeks before the big night. As is customary with movies like this, we get stock characters galore; There's Lloyd (Nicholas Braun), the self-pronounced romantic nice guy who is desperately trying to find a date for prom--who looks and acts all too similar to John Cuzack's Lloyd Dobbler from Say Anything for the shared name to be a coincidence. Then there's our main character, Nova (Aimee Teegarden). She's your typical honor role perfectionist; she acts like she has a stick up her bum yet is sweet as a button. When all the decorations are destroyed in a fire just 3 weeks before prom, the task of getting everything ready in time falls on Nova and Jesse Richter (Thomas McDonell), the long-haired, brooding bad boy who rides a motorcycle and is no stranger to skipping class.
They're destined to fall for each other of course, but our two loves doves must first overcome their mutual feelings of dislike before they can see each other for what they truly are. Corny to the max? Absolutely, but it still manages to get the "awww's" rolling. Though it's a shame that the acting is so cringe-worthy at times that it managed to transform some of the sweetest moments into the perfect time to mock the insincerity of the line that was just delivered. Don't pre-teen film goers deserve quality acting too? 
Yet with all there is to criticize, not to mention the dizzying bundle of cliches (yes, we even get a "trying on dresses for the cute boy" montage somehow forced in there), it's hard to completely trash a film that will so satisfy its target audience--and even occasionally charm those far from it, despite their better judgement.
Rating: C+
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