Directing: C-
Acting: C-
Writing: C
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-
Music: B+

Where do I even start with the beautiful hot mess that is The Prom? This is a film that never met a performance it couldn’t overdo, filled with “hot takes” that are glaringly obvious, a feature film that basically serves as en extended, reprise episode of Glee, right down to its director, Ryan Murphy. To be clear, this movie is deeply flawed. And I generally had a blast watching it.

There’s one key thing that is The Prom’s saving grace, such as there can possibly be one: the musical dance numbers. I know this is a radically low bar to clear, but at least this movie musical is better, on all fronts, than Cats. That movie’s best element was also its music, and even that was barely adequate. The vast majority of the songs, and their accompanying dance routines, are a genuine kick to watch in The Prom. As written by original Broadway play lyricist Chad Beguelin, the songs are rather witty, and I got a good number of laughs out of them. A couple of them are so on the nose, I could have lived without them, as in the Andrew Rannells number “Love Thy Neighbor,” a song about double standards in following the rules of the Bible. It’s catchy as all get out but tonally dated and preposterous.

And that’s the thing about The Prom: with some exceptions, when there are no songs being sung, the movie skates along the borders of dreadful. I suspect the stage production was far better and great fun to see; choosing Ryan Murphy to direct might have seemed to others a no-brainer but strikes me as totally misguided. The one consistent thing about all of that man’s projects is how wildly uneven they are: often enjoyable but usually in spite of needless flaws. From the very start, every actor delivers their lines as though a deliberate caricature of themselves. Anyone who is not a fan of musicals could easily cite this movie as exhibit A.

On the flip side, plenty of people who are fans of musicals will likely quite enjoy this movie. And certainly, any true lover of theater would quite understandably be moved by the whole package being delivered here. It’s hard not to argue, however, how wildly miscast this film is—and I’m not going to take the side of the countless people out there complaining about James Corden being cast in the part of a flamboyantly gay man. Sure, it would be better if they hired an actually-gay man to play this part, but Corden is otherwise fine: he’s performing it as written, and all things considered, he’s far more subtle about the flamboyance than he could have been.

What irritates me more is this trend of hiring huge stars for singing parts not because they are great singers, but merely because they are stars who happen to be able to carry a tune. Why does this movie in particular need Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep? Streep is arguably the greatest actor alive today, and people act as though it’s so impressive that she can also sing. Except her singing ability, while serviceable, is hardly exceptional. But for some reason, she keeps getting cast over and over again in musicals. As for Kidman, she has far less prior experience with musicals, her most famous role in Moulin Rouge! notwithstanding. And her singing as a novelty in that film was part of the point. And granted, James Corden is nowhere near the same caliber as an actor, but he’s a merely adequate singer as well. Is it really so imperative to hire huge stars in a movie like this in order to sell it? Why can’t we get actual, Broadway-caliber performers in these parts? All three of them are saved only by the finesse of the songwriting itself.

So what about the story itself, then? Honestly, it’s corny as hell—which is, frankly, on brand of Ryan Murphy. A group of Broadway stars licking their wounds, after their musical Eleanor! (about Eleanor Roosevelt) flops, head to Indiana for a publicity stunt to improve their images after being labeled narcissists. They find out about a small town high school that is canceling their prom rather than be forced to let a young lesbian couple go to it, and they’ve got it in their heads that they can combat bigotry with their celebrity.

There’s actually some incisive satire to be mined there, most of which The Prom squanders. Murphy seems to want to have it both ways, weaving in the message that it’s naive to think you can solve deeply complex issues with simple minded solutions . . . and then the movie wraps up its conflicts with insanely oversimplified ideas, mostly devoid of nuance. It’s a classic sitcom trope, just stretched out over 130 minutes. That’s roughly half an hour longer than this movie ever needed to be, by the way, and that’s including its several largely irresistible musical sequences.

The thing is though, by and large, The Prom’s heart is in the right place. It feels a little lost to time, the kind of movie that could have become a beloved cult classic were it released twenty years ago. Alas, we are now so massively flooded with new content, it’s been ages since any movie had any hope of being a “cult” anything. The Prom has its narrow lane in the zeitgeist this week, to be replaced and forgotten within a matter of days.

And I won’t lie, I was won over by it—even by the over-the-top performances. To be fair, Jo Ellen Pellman has both talent and charisma to spare in the role of Ellen, the young lesbian in question; Ariana DeBose is lovely as her love interest as well. Still, even some of the smaller supporting parts are oddly miscast, such as Logan Riley as the head cheerleader, who is supposed to be a teenager, is actually 21, and looks at least 25. Somewhere along the line, I lost count of this movie’s many flaws, and almost came to find them endearing. There’s no escaping how much better The Prom would have been had countless better choices been made in its production and casting, or even the fact that it’s objectively not a good movie. But is it fun? I found it undeniably so.

*Did I mention Tracey Ullman is also in this movie? Try to find her!*

Overall: C+