Prom Pact

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.

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.

"Prom Pact" is a romantic comedy produced by Disney that's more like a fairy tale than anything remotely approaching realism. The plot revolves around a high school senior who tries to manipulate a classmate she detests, only to find herself charmed by him and falling in love.

However, the central character is a spoiled and entitled princess who is difficult to like. She displays narcissistic tendencies and an overly ambitious, judgmental feminist attitude that clashes with her eventual love interest, whom she sees as a high school prince who embodies the traits of "privilege" and "patriarchy". Her character is so off-putting that it is difficult to empathize with or root for her.

The movie is marketed as a romantic comedy, but it's not funny at all. The humor falls flat, and the attempts at jokes are clichéd and predictable. The dialogue is uninteresting, and the pacing is slow, making the film feel much longer than its runtime.

Furthermore, the performances in "Prom Pact" are poor, especially from the sidekick male friend. The actors seem to be going through the motions, and his attempts at comic relief are laughable only because they are so bad. The lack of authenticity and the mediocre acting leave the viewer feeling disappointed and uninvested in the story.

Overall, "Prom Pact" is a movie that fails to entertain or connect with its audience. Its unrealistic plot and unlikable characters make it a forgettable and unpleasant experience. The lack of humor and poor performances only add to the film's flaws. Save your time and skip this one.

Mandy Yang (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) is the school misanthrope. She is desperate to get into Harvard. Both her and her best friend Ben Plunkett (Milo Manheim) are class outsiders. Graham Lansing (Blake Draper) is the popular senior. Ms. Chen (Margaret Cho) is the school councilor. After getting waitlisted by Harvard, Mandy needs to befriend Graham and get help from his Senator father.

Peyton Elizabeth Lee and Milo Manheim are naturally endearing performers. It's too bad that Mandy is so snarky. I get the idea of character growth, but it's an off-putting start. The more interesting premise is that Graham is not an idiot. I would play with that even more although the plot device is that she's tutoring him. It needs to sort out his character, but there is potential there. It tries to reference a lot of 80's teen movies, but this movie doesn't have their essence. It seems to be trying to overturn a couple of those 80's tropes and I am interested in seeing what this movie is trying to do. This is a borderline case. I would like to like this more for the actors, but there are cringe issues.

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!)