Prom

Posted on April 28, 2011 at 6:31 pm

Less engrossing than a Clearasil commercial and more synthetic than a Rebecca Black video, “Prom” is Disney’s attempt to launch a new generation of tween idols with a wholesome confection about a high school dance. But the buoyant energy of “High School Musical”-style song and dance numbers is sorely missed and some sweet moments are not enough to make up for a thin storyline featuring too many inexperienced young performers. Anyone over the age of 12 will want to sit out this dance.

It begins three weeks before prom in a suburban high school. The girls are excited about being asked. The boys are terrified about asking them. Apparently, even the ask itself is now a montage-worthy event, with high expectations for drama and creativity from the guys. One romantic invitation features candles in the shed filled with party decorations, igniting a fire that destroys all of the “Starry Night” decorations.This is devastating for Nova (Aimee Teegarden), class president and all-around achiever who is determined that the prom will be “a perfect moment.” Jesse (Thomas McDonell), the school rebel (he has long hair, a motorcycle, and a bad attitude), points out that at the very worst, “the boys and girls of the school have been robbed of the opportunity to stand around and drink punch. Lower the flags to half mast.” The principal orders him to work with Nova to make new decorations, and inevitably, a less combustible set of sparks will fly.

The prom creates stress and drama for other seniors as well. Two popular couples struggle with complications that go beyond the selection of limo and cummerbund. The top candidates for prom queen and king are Jordan (Kylie Bunbury) and her boyfriend Tyler (DeVaughn Nixon), the lacrosse team captain and a playah off the field as well. Mei (Yin Chang) does not know how to tell her devoted boyfriend since middle school that she wants to go to Parsons in New York to study design instead of to the University of Michigan with him. The prom also gives shy, gawky Lloyd (Nicolas Braun) his last chance to ask a girl – any girl — out, with encouragement from his stepsister, Tess (a warm and engaging Raini Rodriguez). And a pretty sophomore (Danielle Campbell) must choose between her awkward, music-mad lab partner and a smoother guy who may not be trustworthy. And they squeeze in two characters from a Disney television series as underclassmen for cross-promotion and the already-announced sequel.

But never fear! The over-packed plot still leaves time for the inevitable trying-on-dresses montage, a parent who has to learn to trust his daughter’s judgment, and a last-minute arrival of a back-lit dream date.

Parents will be relieved that everything stays reassuringly PG. A character who would be a stoner in a PG-13 high school movie merely chomps on the candies that give him his nickname and talks about the girl he is bringing to the prom in a manner that sounds vaguely, well, vague. And parents will appreciate the portrayal of supportive friends and moms and some nice lessons about self-respect, loyalty, and moving beyond shallow fantasies of “the perfect moment.” But with a dozen main characters it feels more like a series of Disney Channel sketches than stories. Its effort to underplay the fantasy of the “perfect moment” prom is lost in its own focus on one magical evening. A complaint from one girl about being required to read Ethan Frome is the only suggestion in the film that school is for any purpose other than college applications and finding prom dates. Like a discount prom corsage, it looks pretty and wilts fast.

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Beastly

Posted on March 3, 2011 at 5:49 pm

It’s the great challenge for all the versions of “Beauty and the Beast” that no one seems able to overcome: the beast is always a far more interesting, appealing, and yes, attractive character than the good-looking but bland prince he wants so desperately to return to. When handsome, wealthy, arrogant prep school senior Kyle (“I Am Number Four’s Alex Pettyfer) is cursed by a witch his “beast” face, covered with exotic scars and tattoos, is more expressive and somehow more real than the pretty boy he was before.

In this latest re-telling of the French fairy tale that dates back to the 18th century, Kyle gets into trouble when he runs for the presidency of the school’s Green Club even though he admits in his campaign speech that he is only doing it because it will look good on his college applications. “Don’t vote for me for my commitment to the environment,” he tells his fellow students. “I don’t have one.” Despite an opposing speech from a gothy-looking girl named Kendra (Mary Kate Olsen), he is elected. But beating her isn’t enough. He plays a cruel prank on Kendra, humiliating her in front of her classmates. And so she curses him. He will look like a beast, as ugly on the outside as he is on the inside, unless within one year he can persuade someone to say, “I love you.”

His father (Peter Krause of “Parenthood” and “Sports Night”) is a television personality who believes that “people like people who look good.” He finds an apartment for Kyle with a housekeeper (Lisa Gay Hamilton) and a blind tutor (the always-terrific Neil Patrick Harris) to care for him and leaves him alone. Kyle sulks and refuses to talk to anyone for five months. (In one of the movie’s cleverest conceits, everyone at school accepts his absence without question because they think he is at rehab.) But Lindy, the quiet scholarship student (“High School Musical’s” Vanessa Hudgens) gives him a reason to want to go out. And more important, she gives him a reason to think about someone else — taking care of her and being close to her. She gives him a reason to want to be liked. And that means being seen.

I liked the way the story plays with the framework of the fairy tale, giving Lindy a reason to have to move into Kyle’s place, isolating them both.

Pettyfer, a very limited performer in his earlier films, has a looser, more confident, more genuine feel here. He even handles Kyle’s funny lines well; he admits how he found the poem he wants to share with Lindy: “I Googled ‘modern poetry’ and ‘impress girls.'” In an era of bullies and mean girls, “Gossip Girls” and “Pretty Little Liars,” it’s nice to have such a tenderhearted fairy tale.

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Easy A

Posted on December 14, 2010 at 8:00 am

Emma Stone finally gets the breakthrough role her fans have been waiting for in “Easy A.” This is the moment that takes her into the front rank of movie stars, sub-category: America’s sweetheart.

Stone has an immediately appealing presence on screen, unpretentious but utterly charming. Here she plays Olive, a girl who doesn’t yet realize that all of the things that make her feel invisible in high school are going to make her wildly beloved for decades after. She is impatient to be “interesting” and so after a thrill-less weekend highlighted by singing along to a greeting card she impulsively tells her best friend Rhiannon (Alyson Michalka) that she had sex with her college student boyfriend. Problem #1: the sex and the boyfriend are both imaginary. This is the kind of mistake a teenager would make. Problem #2: this confession occurs in the ladies’ room at the high school, with no checking the stalls. This is not the kind of mistake anyone would make after 7th grade, but we have to kick that plot into gear, now, don’t we?

And so the whole school immediately knows and believes this scandalous news. Which is why Olive’s closeted gay friend tired of getting picked on comes to her with a proposition. Not that kind. He wants her to have noisy public pretend sex with him so that he can be definitively proven manly. And since her reputation is already shot, what can it hurt? And why not do the same favor for some other needy souls? And then, when it seems the whole school is judging her (conveniently, her class is reading The Scarlet Letter), she decides to sew a big red A on a bustier and see what it feels like to go from invisible to un-missable.

Stone is such an effortless charmer that she keeps the story aloft, even when Olive inexplicably turns her little adventure into a for-pay enterprise, insisting on gift cards(!) in exchange for making the reputation of the guys involved at the cost of her own. A side story involving Olive’s favorite teacher (Thomas Hayden Church) and his wife, the school guidance counselor (Lisa Kudrow) is also unnecessarily tawdry. Far better are the encounters with the always delectable (and just about always underused) Amanda Bynes as the school holier-than-thou abstinence proponent and the always ultra-watchable Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as Olive’s deliciously off-kilter parents. Their scenes are warm, witty, and surprising, and livelier than Olive’s romantic ups and downs. In every way, it is Stone who is the heart of this movie, and she wins our hearts as well.

Legendary

Posted on September 9, 2010 at 6:07 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for suggestive material, brief partial nudity and some fighting scenes
Profanity:	Some crude high-school insults
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Character abuses alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Some fights, bully
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	September 10, 2010

A skinny teenager wants to wrestle in this unpretentious film with a predictable storyline (it even gives away the ending in the first minute) but benefits from some sharp dialog and the always watchable Patricia Clarkson.
Cal Chetley (Devon Graye) has a lot of spirit and a great relationship with his widowed mother (Patricia Clarkson) — until she finds out that like his late father and estranged brother he wants to join the wrestling team. She points out that he’s a beanpole while his brother Mike is “built like a car.” But he has been picked on by a bully and would like to be able to defend himself physically as well as he does verbally. And joining the team gives him a reason (and an excuse) to try to repair the connection to Mike (the WWE’s John Cena).
It’s your basic sports plot. There’s the meet where he fails miserably. There’s the secret hold he has to be ready to learn. The wrestling and the relationship between the brothers seems to make progress and then hits some obstacles on the way to the big meet.
It may satisfy wrestling fans but it is unlikely to make the sport compelling to anyone who is not already knowledgeable. It is more likely to make some new fans for Graye, who is instantly likable as he stands up to a bully, gently teases his mother about her date, and even more gently helps his friend Luli (Madeleine Martin in the film’s weakest performance) understand that she is not valuing herself enough. Cena is well cast as a big guy who keeps a lot inside, and Danny Glover plays a helpful guide who somehow always shows up when he is needed, though no one ever sees him but Cal. Clarkson makes the mother real and touching, bringing a wry affection and touching pride to her moments with Cal and a fierce urgency to the family tensions. Her scene with Martin, as two women living in male-dominated households, is a highlight that reminds us where the real victories are.

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To Save a Life

Posted on August 2, 2010 at 10:48 pm

Whose life does the title refer to? “To Save a Life” begins with a funeral, a tragic loss of a high school kid who committed suicide because he felt isolated and friendless. Jake (Randy Wayne), a popular senior who thinks he has it all attends the funeral, remembering Roger, who was his closest friend when they were children. Roger once saved Jake’s life when they were on their bicycles, putting himself in the path of an accident that left him with a permanent limp, and Jake wonders how they grew apart and when the last time was that he even said hello to Roger in the school hallway.

Other lives will be at risk, metaphorically and literally, as this story continues, and one of its strengths is its willingness to engage candidly and open-heartedly with the real issues that confront teenagers, giving it some heft and credibility. It also benefits from better production values than most Christian-identified entertainment, with sound, lighting, script, direction and acting that compare with the kinds of content kids are used to on television and in theaters. While some adult audience members looking for family-friendly fare may not be happy about the frank portrayal of some high-risk teen behavior, the target age group will appreciate its honesty about high school life and stress. Even more important is the portrayal of a clergyman who walks the walk, making his leadership about meaning and values and most of all kindness. He does not try to make God the explanation for everything, just the beginning of the answer. And he handles one of teenagers’ most frequent complaints about “churchy” people, that some of them are hypocrites who do not practice what they preach, in a forthright and believable manner that is genuinely disarming.

I have one DVD and one Blu-Ray to give away. Write to me at moviemom@moviemom.com with “Life DVD” or “Life Blu-Ray” in the subject line and the first to arrive will win. Good luck!