On the eve of an award season that promises to be the most difficult since the Cold War due to the coronavirus emergency, the great film contenders present the films they intend to propose for the great awards season: ad hoc films with big names, big budgets and great promises. However, it often happens (see the case of the colossal failure of Cats by Tom Hopper just a year ago) that certain strategic products prove to be a fundamental example of the creative and artistic crisis of a Hollywood that is less and less original or courageous, but more cunning and lazy. This year it's up to the ambitious (and presumptuous) The Prom, adaptation of the 2016 musical of the same name with a colossal cast (first of all the divas Meryl Streep e Nicole Kidman) directed by a big name in American entertainment such as Ryan Murphy who pack up a hypocritical, diabetic and joyless plastic show Netflix.
Behind the story
Let's go in order. It is 2010, and in a remote Mississippi town the then eighteen year old Constance McMillen asks to be able to attend the prom with his girlfriend. The principal of the school first, and then the parent-teacher association, come up with incoherent excuses to prevent the girl from attending, and propose a separate dance for the two homosexual girls or to cancel the party directly.
When the young woman decides to contact the American Civil Liberties Union (a non-profit body for the defense of constitutional rights), the news arrives on TV and then in court, where a judge requires the school to organize an inclusive prom to all the students. The story takes a further cruel turn when Constance and her fiancée arrive at a party with no attendees: the school and the association (unbeknownst to the two girls) have secretly organized a second dance to circumvent the judge's verdict and prevent the students anyway. to participate, inviting parents and students to keep Constance in the dark.
The girl - who in the meantime has moved to another school - soon became a celebrity in America and in the homosexual community for the courage shown during the story, and her story was a source of inspiration (among others) of the musical in question, The Prom, critical and public success.
History
The Netflix adaptation follows the original plot in detail: Dee Dee Allen (Meryl Streep) e Barry Glickman (the rarely bearable or adequate James Corden) are two self-centered Broadway stage stars grappling with a critical situation: their expensive new show - a musical about Roosvelt's life (how ironic…) - is a huge flop that has suddenly destroyed their careers.
Meanwhile, in a small Indiana town, the high school student Emma Nolan (Jo Ellen Pellman) is experiencing a very different sorrow: despite the support of the high school principal Tom Office Series (Keegan-Michael Key), the head of the parent-teacher association Mrs. Greene (Kerry Washington) banned her from attending prom with her girlfriend, unaware that it was her daughter. Alyssa (Ariana DeBose).
Dee Dee and Barry, looking for a social cause capable of relaunching their image and career in the public eye, decide that Emma's plight is the perfect cause and set out on a journey with Angie (Nicole Kidman) and Trent (Andrew Rannells), another pair of cynical actors seeking a professional rise. But their self-centered celebrity activism unexpectedly backfires and the four find themselves turning their lives upside down as they come together to offer Emma a night where she can celebrate who she really is.
A fake show
The Prom is the sum of everything that keeps more and more people away from the musical and the justified proof of the snobbery of a good part of the musical and theatrical world towards the genre: a little show with forgettable songs and two-dimensional characters, which uses the reference material to shield the paucity of its execution, and which would have more sense and dignity as a parody of himself.
Ryan Murphy's adaptation closes perhaps the worst year of the director's career after the flops of Ratched and The Politician, all curiously the result of the American producer's collaboration with Netflix. The Prom is a mediocre adaptation, lacking in inventiveness, but filled with an embarrassing paucity of execution by most of the professionals involved.
The musical numbers are trivial, the brain-dead dialogue and the big names that should lift this little film from nothing seem to be there by chance: Meryl Streep dusts off her original singing skills for the project and for the wrong role and, for once as rarely it happens, with little transport. XNUMX-year-old Nicole Kidman is ridiculous in the role of a young chorus girl waiting for the big leap, and judging by her performance in the film she seems to be aware of it.
James Corden (whose popular fascination I still cannot personally explain) is extremely irritating in his (yet another) role as a chubby singer (already "admired" in the film adaptation of Cats), this time taken to even lower levels thanks to the addition of offensive flaming homosexual undertones.
The Prom is a high-budget musical whose only success is to faithfully recreate the underlying hypocrisy of the original: the role, the struggle and growth of Emma / Constance, which should have been the heart of the story, are cornered, frame a glossy self-celebration of Broadway as a place of possibility and freedom of expression, and the (clumsy) attempts by the main characters to serve as parodies of the mannerism and obsessions of the New York theater scene deceive no one.
