More alphabetical trawling of the Disney Plus app lands me on Disney Channel Original Movie "Bad Hair Day" - which despite the pretty horrible title and poster was actually alright. (relatively speaking).
On the day of prom, technical whizzkid Monica (Laura Marano) discovers that her hair has reacted to the various products she's put in it, her dress has melted, and her shoes have broken. Before she can set about fixing these issues and becoming the prom queen her polling data suggests she'll be - a former police detective, Liz (Leigh-Allyn Baker) knocks on her door and enquires about a piece of costume duty that she owns. Monica agrees to hand over the jewellery, but only if Liz provides her with a lift for the day, to sort out her problems before prom.
So, this is 'alright' in the sense I was anticipating an unwatchable disaster. That it makes sense (kind of) and actually has a story is, in that case, a big plus. It's a slight story admittedly and one that relies on the odd contrivance to get through it, but I've sat through a lot worse. The other thing that makes it watchable is that both the leads are good and that their chemistry together really works. It's a massively familiar relationship, obviously. An unlikely antagonistic relationship, where the pair bond across the day and with a threat to both of them and end up almost as mother and daughter. Their pairing makes it work, I think you could have made exactly the same script with two different actresses and it wouldn't have worked half as well as it does. I also quite liked that Monica was both the preppy prom queen fashionista and a tech nerd with an offer from MIT, whereas previously I suspect many films would have separated them into lead and "friend" roles.
I mean, we're still only talking that it's good relative to other DCOM's that Disney Plus has forced me to watch, not that it's actually good. It's pretty cheap looking and has some questionable acting from some of the supporting cast.
I wouldn't recommend you hunted it down, but if, for some reason, you had to watch an original Disney Channel movie, you can do a lot worse.
