World News – UK – The Prom Movie Review: Ryan Murphy’s inconsistent dazzling musical

With a serious A-list and shiny production values, this should have been a much better movie. And the weakest link is obvious.

Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, James Corden and Andrew Rannells star in this all-singing, all-dancing musical film.

There’s a lot of kerfuffle about James Corden’s appearance as the flamboyant theater star in the Netflix movie The Prom.

Some have labeled the portrayal of Corden, who is straight and playing a gay character, « offensive » and « gross ». . While there are arguments for both sides as to whether straight actors should play gay, the bigger problem with what’s going on in The Prom is that Corden just isn’t strong enough.

He’s naturally charismatic. A personable moderator, moderator and comedic performer. A great singer with an impressive pipe. But nothing in Corden’s résumé suggests that he was the right choice for a role that required far more nuance and sensitivity than the melodrama he brought up.

In The Wild, Corden’s plot is by far the weakest and screaming, but not the only problem.

The Prom is a dazzling, bold, and apologetic musical and the first feature in producer Ryan Murphy’s huge Netflix deal. It’s also the first movie Murphy made in a decade – the last was Eat Pray Love.

Inspired by a recently released Broadway musical, The Prom centers on a teenage girl, Emma (newcomer Jo Ellen Pellman), who is essentially run by a PTA board of “traditional values,” led by parent Ms. Greene (Kerry Washington ).

Unlucky Broadway stars Dee Dee Allen (Meryl Streep), Barry Glickman (Corden), Angie Dickinson (Nicole Kidman) and Trent Oliver (Andrew Rannells) are looking for a celebrity to revive their happiness through good advertising.

It’s a cynical trick and they blow with all the noise of a circus in Emma’s town, full of ridicule for its supposedly bigoted citizens – with the exception of the supporting headmaster, played by Keegan-Michael Key.

Besides that, when I was never in Indiana, I was surprised that The Prom was discontinued in 2020 because it was very strange that even the small town of Americana would only have one gay kid in the whole school and each other The young person was homophobic. Maybe this is really happening in a suburb of Indiana, but it bumps off anyway.

The Prom is a great musical in which the names of its actors are literally bathed in lights in the opening credits. It wears its heart on its sleeve and has many musical set pieces, many of which are performed with pizzazz and spirit.

Of the lead cast, Rannells, who launched the role of Elder Price on Broadway for Book of Mormon, is the most familiar with the material and really sells it in a mall that basically solves homophobia.

And that’s the other problem with The Prom – everything is so simple in the end. Perhaps that’s the convention of many musicals in which a song and a dance solve complex problems, but The Prom takes giant leaps (literally and metaphorically) in its history without deserving it.

Perhaps, while the glare distracts you, you’re hoping that you don’t notice that it’s not flowing as well, the tone shifts are chunky, or that it’s at least 25 minutes too long.

Jo Ellen Pellman and Ariana DeBose are the real stars of The Prom. Melinda Sue Gordon / NetflixSource: Delivered

Like much of Murphy’s work, especially anything he’s done for Netflix where it appears he has few creative boundaries for the streamer, the prom’s inconsistency means that where it’s bad, is good too.

The good thing is a bright, shining spotlight: the young couple at the center of the story, Emma and Alyssa (Ariana DeBose).

Pellman as Emma is truly a find. Her warm, big-hearted on-screen presence illuminates anything more than the rainbow-colored production design of The Prom. Pellman’s vocal skills are so strong, and she has an irrepressible Drew Barrymore quality, that you will want anything for her.

Pellman and DeBose are the heart of The Prom, and whenever they’re on screen, it’s enough to forget about everything else in this movie – at least for a moment.

Prom raises questions about the phenomenon of celebrity abduction, which sometimes makes it worse, but he’s never really interested in getting into it properly.

Thank goodness the real focus isn’t on the bigger names in the cast, but on the glowing younger cast that The Prom makes at least halfway visible.

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Meryl Streep, Netflix, Ryan Murphy, James Corden, Nicole Kidman