Peyton Elizabeth Lee excels in the lead role with a performance that would make Molly Ringwald proud.
Few events loom larger in the minds of movie teenagers than prom. Dreams are realized, bullies are put in their place, girls are declared “all that.” Real life is rarely as dramatic, thankfully, but that doesn’t mean we should expect studios (and streamers) to stop trying to make the next “Pretty in Pink” or “10 Things I Hate About You” anytime soon. Disney offer a fresh take on teendom’s big night with “Prom Pact,” in which two platonic best friends who are more comfortable on the outside looking in decide to finally step into the fray of high school life.
Mandy Yang (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) first appears in a Ruth Bader Ginsburg T-shirt, obsessively refreshing her Harvard application in the hopes that it’s gone from “pending” to “accepted” while trying to avoid the pep rally where North Seattle High will officially announce its prom theme: the ‘80s. “Real life starts once we get out of here and go to college,” she says to bestie Ben Plunkett (Milo Manheim), who’s slightly more enthused about the prospect of having a traditional high-school experience than she is. She asks him to prom as a gesture of goodwill despite the fact that “the only thing I hate more than slow dancing is the gender wage gap,” setting the stage for what so far feels like yet another familiar teen movie.
Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing; this formula is tried and true for a reason. Among the predictable bits here, a deception comes back to haunt the protagonist in the third act, which in this case entails Mandy trying to become friends with the most popular kid in school (Blake Draper) because his dad is a Harvard alum and her entire life trajectory is predicated upon being accepted. Directed by Anya Adams (a veteran of such TV series as “Black-ish,” “Glow” and “Yellowjackets”) and written by Anthony Lombardo (“Modern Family”), what follows is sweeter and more clever than the majority of its peers.
Synopsis
It’s prom season, and high school senior Mandy and her best friend and fellow outsider Ben are surrounded by over-the-top “promposals.” Mandy is only focused on getting into her dream school Harvard, but as she starts tutoring basketball all-star Graham, she must re-evaluate whether her dream school is worth the cost of everything she believes in.
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