Prom Dates

Prom Dates hit Hulu on May 3rd and is a nice buddy comedy to kick off the summer. The movie stars Julia Lester and Antonia Gentry as two best friends who have been dreaming of the perfect prom since they were 13 years old. As fate would have it, they find themselves 24 hours away from the big day dateless and willing to do anything and everything they need to have the prom of their dreams.

I would classify this as a very fun and hilarious buddy comedy. It is filled with over the top and sometimes gross jokes that mostly hit, and I overall enjoyed it. If you are looking for a classy movie that is a contender for any awards, I recommend looking elsewhere because that is not what this film delivers. However, if you are looking for a fun watch with lots of laughs, then Prom Dates may just be what you are looking for.

I can't say that I was exactly harboring the biggest of expectations to the 2024 comedy "Prom Dates" from writer D. J. Mausner and director Kim O. Nguyen when I stumbled upom it by random chance. And with it being a movie that I had never heard about, much less ever watched, then of course I opted to sit down and give the movie a fair chance.

The storyline in the movie was adequate. It was, however, a somewhat generic storyline. It wasn't as if writer D. J. Mausner was reinventing the young adult comedy genre here with this movie. That being said, don't get me wrong, becuase "Prom Dates" certainly was a watchable and entertaining enough movie, if you happen to like this particular genre of movies.

"Prom Dates", however, was somewhat devoid of comedy, and I wasn't brought to laughs a single time throughout the course of the 86 minutes that the movie ran for. So, as for this movie being a comedy, well, no, not so much really. This was more of a movie about coming of age and a movie about friendships.

I wasn't familiar with a single actress or actor on the cast list, except for actor John Michael Higgins. The actors and actresses did good jobs in bringing their characters and the storyline to life on the screen.

This is not a movie that will find its way back to my screen a second time, as the movie was a bit too generic for my liking, and the lack of comedy just was somewhat disappointing.

My rating of director Kim O. Nguyen's 2024 movie "Prom Dates" lands on a five out of ten stars.

So I gotto admit I'm the occasional sucker for teenage comedies. Hence, once in a while I check some out. This one did not particularly stand out, but it was one of these nights where you just wanna have some dumb fun.

Storywise, we are faced with two teenage girls who made a pact to have prom dates. Sounds even dumber when you spell it out.

Well, the leads were instantly likable and had great chemistry. Other characters did not stand out in any way (with the exception of maybe Vodka Heather...), but were kind of hyper stereotypes. Quite strange in the context of this particular coming of age story.

The movie did not look cheap. The acting was fine. The editing was tight and followed genre conventions. So from a practical perspective, solid movie work.

In summary, a really silly coming of age comedy with enough quirkyness to keep you entertained.

Being a Disney movie, I find it weird though to contrast queer themes with employing hyper stereotyped characters and resolving conflicts with a little good hearted violence. Nevertheless, I had fun. Enjoy!

Best friends, Hannah (Julia Lester) and Jess (Antonia Gentry), made a pact at 13 to have a great prom with their dates. They are now high school seniors. Jess finds her boyfriend cheating. Hannah's boyfriend is too clingy and she comes out of the closet. The two best friends suddenly find themselves dateless just 24 hours before prom.

The girls are well into their twenties. That's my first impression and the lasting one. I can't ignore it every time they're on the screen. Most of these 'kids' are well into their twenties. Otherwise, this is a fine raunchy teen comedy. It has a lot of the familiar humor. A lot of it works well except these actors are too old. Maybe there are child labor laws involved. Still, they need actors who look like teenagers.

Jess (Antonia Gentry) and Hannah (Julia Lester) are two friend who many years ago made a blood pact to have the perfect prom and now, hours before the big night, they struggle in finding dates after breaking up with the ones they had.

Director Kim O. Nguyen has very little to offer in her first feature film other than a creativity-free zone. Prom Dates is a movie where its few redeemable aspects in no way make up for its many lacks. As a comedy it goes without saying it aims at humor, but alas, the "comedy" in the movie is nowhere to be found, on the contrary, it often had the opposite effect rendering the whole endeavor a humor-free zone. The characters are all unidimensional and unlikeable in every sense of the word, they go in their lives making uncalled sexual advances bordering abuse and when things do not go the way they want gratuitous violence is they preferred response. Like many teen comedies, its humor many times borders bad taste and manages to elicit anything but laughs. Hannah's proclivity towards vomiting is distasteful, to say the least. To aggravate things further, it has some musical numbers that will make you melancholic about the times when you had to at least try to sing well in order to sing a song. The song where Greg (Kenny Ridwan) proposes Hannah to be his prom date is terrible.

Sexuality is an explored concept in Prom Dates, but the many jokes at the expense of Hannah where a correlation is draw between clothe preferences and sexual orientation, as if being LGBTQIA+ equated certain dress code, is equally simplistic in its stereotyped belief as it is untasteful. As previously said, it has very few redeemable aspects. It is unfunny, badly written, with bad performances, lacking any profundity and plausibility, full of stereotypical characters, and promotes gender violence. It is terrible and definitely one of the worst movies of 2024.