Had WWTW actually attended his senior prom it’s likely neither sex nor drugs would have entered the equation.
And, given I went to high school in the ’80s, quality rock ‘n’ roll was also in short supply.
In short, a movie based on my high school daze would have certainly earned a PG rating.
Washington Post film critic Sandie Angulo Chen’s review of the new squeaky clean dramedy “Prom” doesn’t think today’s teenagers live PG-rated lives (hat tip: Newsbusters). Chen calls the film a “whitewash of the quintessential rite of passage.” And she’s just getting started.
When this teen drama hits Disney’s cable network, as it inevitably will, the studio’s basic-cable censors will have absolutely nothing to cut, and that’s the problem. A pure-and-clean prom movie is perfectly fine for a television special, like the original “High School Musical,” but in a feature film, it plays as shockingly inauthentic.
Teen movies don’t have to be authentic. They can be stylized and silly, or gritty and urbane. They can be, frankly, anything they want to be, as long as they entertain us. It’s certainly true some high schoolers live far darker lives than the ones seen in “Prom.” But it’s equally accurate some high schoolers are just as emotionally healthy as the ones seen in the film.
I wished “Prom” had incorporated more social media and texting moments, since those multimedia tools seem ingrained in today’s youth culture. Perhaps that decision was made to make sure the film didn’t look hopelessly dated in a few years. But I sure as heck won’t slam a film that shows wholesome characters who work through their issues to emerge as stronger people.
Fortunately, our Web world allows readers to fire back at critics who go astray. Here’s the first comment attached to the review, and it’s so good I wouldn’t change a syllable (I might proof read it, though!).
Ms. Chen who reviewed this morning for the Washington Post must not have children. Parents of teen agers have a difficult time finding a movie that is acceptable viewing. We do not need our children to soak up more of the vile , profane culture that surrounds them. And “Prom” a nice movie, is one of the few fare I feel is available for our teenager. It may not be reflective of “real” life but that is just fine. Neither was the “Wizard of Oz” or many other movies. Certainly sci-fi flicks are real. Shame on you Ms. Chen for being opposed to “nice” in favor of vile.
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
I refuse to discuss any events that may or may not have occurred during my prom way back in the 80s (on the grounds it may incriminate me), but I see no problem with a wholesome family movie. Is it totally realistic? No, probably not. But why not have higher ideals? I do think that more teens can relate to the John Hughes’ view of teendom more than they can Disney’s, but there’s nothing wrong with light, breezy fair for kids. Why must they be inundated with harsh reality all of the time? That reviewer needs to seriously get over herself.
“Why not have higher ideals?”
Well said!
It’s funny how she used the term “inauthentic” without noticing the irony.
I’d love to ask “as compared to what?” The super market version of high school life thats been tested, retested, boxed and sold in bulk by the industry for the last 40 years, where every version is nothing less than a retread of old and tired rite of passage themes?
The Glee crowd could take note. Sometimes its refreshing to see something which dares to be different. I don’t think that this version is any more authentic than those other films, but only a bloated self important blowhard would think that.
If we’re going to start insisting on “authenticity” in movies, Chen, maybe you’d also like to insist that 7 in 10 movie characters be Christian, and restrict gay characters to 1 in every 30 (actually the low estimate’s been revised down, to 1 in every 60). Only one in 50 can be Jewish, naturally.
1 in 8 can be black. 1 in 7 should be Hispanic, and virtually none of them Puerto Ricans (“Mexican” is not a racial slur, you know; it’s just the other national origins aren’t as statistically significant).
There should be more minority criminals than white ones, but the white ones sentenced more harshly. Criminality by returning military vets should be significantly lower than that by civilians.
Let’s not even discuss what percentage of terrorists should be Muslim, or what percentage of Muslim characters should support or at least approve of terrorism.
Unless a story is set in the early 80s, no exclusively heterosexual character should ever contract AIDS, unless such an (incredibly rare) event is the entire point of the plot. Liberal characters should have approximately one quarter again the income of conservative ones, but be less than half as generous.
I mean, you know, since we’ve decided we want our movies to accurately represent every aspect of reality, and everything.
Forgot some: Native Americans usually have European first names, though often unusual ones (I went to school with Navajos named Bjorn and Leander, and a Havasupai named Millicent). Only the Sioux have Indian names that follow the “Standing Bear” pattern, and Navajos are specifically forbidden to use animal names (since calling the person, or pet, named after an animal also calls the animal, and calling bears, wolves, ravens, or owls is just asking for trouble).
Native American religions have more in common with Orthodox Judaism than with EST, except they’re even more esoteric—and Hopi women aren’t even allowed in the temples.
Navajos look more like Michelle Malkin than they do like Lou Diamond Phillips.
Buddhism is more like Evangelical Christianity than it is like…whatever watered-down nonsense it’s always portrayed as. Except Evangelical clergy are allowed to smoke, drink, eat meat, and marry.
Reminds me of LA Time’s Sheila Benson’s review of “Bambi” in the 1970s – bad movie because the female characters didn’t have big enough parts. More an indication of the obsessive politics of the reviewer than the movie itself.
So all of those teen movies where the popular jocks and cheerleader are physically flawless, the geekiest guy manages to woo the prettiest girl with his awkward but charming wit, and everyone loses their virginity on prom night are “authentic”? Man, I sure missed a lot in high school.
I don’t know where people like Chen get the idea that teenagers are all hard-drinking juvenile delinquents, but that sure doesn’t match up with my high school experience. My prom was a relatively innocent affair, which was more about getting dressed up and awkward dancing than anything else.
But you know, what was really missing from classic teen movies like The Breakfast Club is a gritty edginess. Maybe they should have thrown in some heroin use or rape to make people like Ms. Chen happy.
The guy over on Big Hollywood had an interesting point: everything Chen said she wanted to see in it was from another movie. Prom in real life is, well, ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: a school dance where people are wearing fancy, frequently very expensive clothes. And, at least inside the building (at my school, faculty chaperones were patrolling the parking lot, too), under adult supervision. “I don’t want to mess up my clothes or embarrass myself” plus “the entire staff is watching us” makes movie proms the least realistic part of their portrayal of high school, and it was already complete nonsense.
It’s actually sorta funny she wanted this movie to ape other teen movies, because all—no exaggeration—of my trouble in high school came from trying to make it conform to teen-movie preconceptions. The second I stopped seeing the world in the class-war paradigm movies impose on adolescence (“popular” people are the oppressors, the unpopular are the inherently virtuous underclass, etc—I once referred to the paradigm as “The Class-Conscious Nerds of All School Districts), everyone was ridiculously nice. Seriously, if I compare my first two years of school to the last two, it was like two different planets.
One wonders what Miss Chen’s own prom experience was like.
“One wonders what Miss Chen’s own prom experience was like.”
One shudders at the thought.