Un bal pour Harvard

While in some ways it felt like a rehash of many high school rom com movies, "Prom Pact" was actually a pretty good movie. It wasn't as cheesy as some of Disney's other recent movies, the acting was pretty good, and the characters were dynamic. Mandy was one of Disney's better female lead characters in recent movies--strong, confident, but also vulnerable and willing to change as she learns more about people.

The movie is also pretty spot on with contemporary teenage culture, with the omnipresence of phones and social media, as well as the idea of these big glamorous "promposals." The movie is fun for a wide audience, but very relatable for teens.

I thought this was a fun, well paced high school movie. I found it quite reminiscent of 10 Things I hate about you (an absolute classic if you haven't seen it and definitely one to watch if you enjoy this as it's even better - Heath Ledger and Julia Styles are magnificent).

The plot is, of course, somewhat predictable (what teen movie isn't?) but I really enjoyed it. It has some good tunes (lots of 80s tracks), sweet characters and conversations, and a really nice messages about friendship, not judging a book by its cover and friendship. I recommend it for an easy and enjoyable watch with the family (good for tweens and teens - my 10yr old loved it!).

The story was not very interesting. The plot was very predictable. I feel like I have seen that same movie many, many times before. Acting was wooden and the dialogue was forced and not very believable. A "speech" late in the movie was especially horrible in that regard. In real life, people would have burst out laughing while in the movie it was seen as very deep and profound.

All of that could have been fine if the lead character was someone that I could be cheering for and actually cared what happened to. It's no joke, she is the absolute worst person shown in the entire movie. She is really an extremely privileged, narcissistic, selfish, manipulative liar, who believes she is a victim and doing good and being virtuous by liking the "correct" people and wearing T-shirts with the "right" slogans printed on them. I don't know if she has ever actually DONE anything decent in her life. The ending is especially bad.

The movie wants us to believe there is some serious character development going on here, but I didn't see any.

And by children I mean anyone younger than 12 simply based off of one scene where the young cashier talks about the mc's best friend hooking up with girls. "I mean have you ever put your P in a V" and I know I sound like THAT mom but it was unnecessary and the only added benefit was that I now won't let young ears watch the movie. Not everything has to be sexualized.

Other than that, it's a cute movie. Sure the mc is a bit of a pick-me girl with her "that's not feminist or environmentally friendly" attitude but she's a fairly good actress and the storyline is cute, even if a little predictable. But that's what I want in a Disney original movie.

Predictability and a lack of vulgarity.

Prom Pact is supposed to be a little cliché, by design. It's a movie that is doing a tribute to (and a send up of) all those classic movies of the 1980s (with a few hints of films from the 1990s in the mix as well).

Peyton Elizabeth Lee is Mandy, the focused high school brainiac who never really had a social life because she's too busy saving the planet and fighting the patriarchy to bother. Oh, and she's absolutely intent on getting into Harvard so she can continue her crusades.

Margaret Cho, as Ms. Chen, Mandy's guidance counselor, tries to loosen Mandy up, to little success, but is her typical hilarious self every time she appears.

Mandy's bestie, Ben, played by Milo Manheim, is also just as socially awkward as she is (okay, he's much more awkward), except when they're together. They spend their off time in school clowning the popular people, which include captain of the basketball team, Graham (Blake Draper) and head cheerleader LaToya (Monique A. Green).

When Mandy gets waitlisted for Harvard, she tries to discover a way to get an edge. That's when she learns that Graham's dad, a prominent politician, was a Crimson grad and maybe could write her a letter of recommendation?

Then it becomes a scramble for Mandy to get in good with the guy she mocked so his father could make her dream come true, and for Ben to try to be near LaToya, who he had been crushing on since junior high.

The most fun here is in all of the references to classic 80s pop culture, as most every "promposal" features a moment taken from one of those films as a part. The parents will get a kick out of that. And the soundtrack of featured music is a playlist of hits of the era from start to finish!

But the "pact" part of Prom Pact was Mandy and Ben's agreement to go to prom together, as sort of a joke, but as kind of protection for each other since neither one of them fit into the whole "High School Popularity" concept. However, what happens when other things happen and maybe they each discover things they never knew about themselves and about the people around them?

This is a knowing film that references the 1980s in a way to make it feel current and charming and it all is retrofitted brilliantly into the 2020s. Director Anya Adams deserves full credit for balancing these two disparate decades so deftly, it doesn't feel contrived.

Definitely cute, relatable and with a high LOL factor, Prom Pact is totally tubular and pure guava. (That means it's very worth watching!)