PROM DATES
(director/writer: Kim O. Nguyen; screenwriter: D.J. Mausner; cinematographer: Bradford Lipson; editor: Daniel Reitzenstein; music: Matthew Compton; cast: Antonia Gentry (Jess), Kenny Ridwan (Greg), Julia Lester (Hannah), Terry Hu (Angie), Jordan Bhuhat (Luca), J.T. Neal (Jacob), John Michael Higgins (Principal), Chelsea Handler (Greg’s Mom, Barb), Zion Moreno (Heather); Runtime: 86; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Kevin Hart, Mollie DiBartolo, Jeremy Garelick, Luke Kelly-Clyne, Mickey Liddell, Will Phelps, Bryan Smiley, Pete Shilaimon; Hulu; 2024)
“The irritating, witless and crude high school comedy is not funny or entertaining.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
The irritating, witless and crude high school comedy is not funny or entertaining. It’s a watered down version of Booksmart (2019), but not as smart.
It’s directed in her feature film debut by TV director Kim O. Nguyen, and is crassly written by D.J. Mausner. It’s a strained TV-like film always fishing for laughs, or to be wacky, or to have something relevant to say about high school proms.
Jess (Antonia Gentry) yearns to be a prom queen. Her closeted lesbian friend Hannah (Julia Lester) and her are BFFs. In middle school, when 13, they sneak into a high school prom and make a blood pact that they would have a perfect senior high school prom. Four years later their prom is 24 hours away, and both girls don’t have dates. Tension mounts, as they are both stuck in awful romances–Jess with a cheating boyfriend (Jordan Bhuhat) and Hannah with an unreliable Asian nerd, the closeted gay, Greg (Kenny Ridwan). Both girls break-up with their disappointing boyfriends
To find dates, the girls attend a frat party, a club stripper party and visit nearby Rutgers. Jess converses at the college party in subtitles with Giancarlo, a non-English speaking Italian student, who happens to be a satanist, trying to find a human to sacrifice (obviously not a good date). While Hannah connects at the house party with the hip lesbian Angie (Terry Hu), a high school senior.
The superficial plot updates the teen comedy genre film with a more contemporary look, but still leaves it with a story stuck in the dark ages.
REVIEWED ON 5/4/2024 GRADE: C