You know what? Prom Pact (2023) is close enough to what I wanted it to be that I almost want to say you should just let it wash over you. Enjoy it without a thought in your brain. But I can’t quite do that. I can’t because I’m a fool for picking movies like this one apart at the seams, so they can (someday) be put back together better than before. Which isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy this peppy teen rom-com about a how a feisty young eco-feminist, who eschews all things considered high-school cool, has the perfect plan to get herself off the waitlist at her dream college by conning the star basketball player, state senator’s son, and all around hottie. That is until it all goes to pieces when (GASP!) she realizes he might not be such an empty-headed jock after all. Still, I have notes.
Mandy Yang (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) isn’t interested in pep rallies, prom themes, or anything else you’d put on a list of stereotypically “fun” high school experiences. No, friends, Mandy Yang, has eyes only for Harvard. “Because,” as she tells her (very sarcastic) Guidance Counselor Ms. Chen (Margaret Cho), “Harvard is the best school in the world.” Wait. Hang on. Let me recover my eyeballs from whence they rolled. Then, she continues in a rant that Ms. Chen has heard so often she can recite it verbatim, “and Harvard is where my hero, development economist Dr. Ingrid Downs went. And Harvard is where she’s a tenured professor. And Harvard is where Dr. Downs, a woman who has literally won two Nobel Prizes, mentors young women like me who wanna change the world for the better!” And, of course, because Harvard is also where the super-smart, intellectual characters in movies like this one almost ALWAYS want to go: Can’t we, I don’t know, think outside the box? I mean, I’m pretty sure Mandy, who, during the all-school pep rally she’s forced to attend, tells her bestie Ben Plunkett (Milo Manheim) that basketball star and school heartthrob Graham Lansing (Blake Draper) is just “an entitled dumbass who uses his nice smile and male privilege to fail upward” would have places beyond Harvard (and the other basic Ivies she mentions as her fall-back schools) on her radar. But we’re stuck with Harvard as we watch Mandy feverishly refreshing the status of her online application to see if it has updated.
Meanwhile, everyone else at the pep rally thinks that Graham and his just-so floppy hair are the be all end all. Mandy is horrified to see that even Ben is getting into the groove a bit. Though, if she weren’t so distracted by Haaaarvard, she might notice that’s because he’s absolutely gaga for LaToya Reynolds (Monique A. Green), the head cheerleader who is charged with announcing this year’s prom theme, which is the 80s. No sooner is the theme announced than the lights dim and a group of guys come out dressed like Ghostbusters to perform the first choreographed “promposal” of the season. It doesn’t go exactly according to plan, because the girl being asked assumes it’s Graham asking her instead of her actual boyfriend. Oopsie doodles. Anyway, that aside, it’s the first of many such over-the-top 80s-themed musical asks, which Mandy dismisses as “just another example of the patriarchy affirming its dominance over women.” I feel like I want her to expand on her ideas a little bit more there, because I feel like that line was written by someone who maybe doesn’t entirely believe what they’re writing. Later, she makes the point that boys are asking girls using references—Ghostbusters, Say Anything, The Breakfast Club—that it’s not even clear that the girls even like or care about, which is a solid point about, you know, everything.
Now, this is going to shock you, but Mandy and Ben do not run with the popular crowd. I know! Do you need a moment to recover? No, they, like all good heroes and heroines of 80s rom-coms and beyond, have spent their high school existence on the fringes and fray. Ben, due to an unfortunate allergic reaction to nuts back in grade school, has long been known (when he’s known at all) as “No Nuts Plunkett.” Mandy, much to the chagrin of her mother, simply has no interest in the teenage social scene. She’s dubbed the popular kids the “Everests” because they will likely peak in high school. Not to be picky—Ha! Who am I kidding? I’m always picky—but wouldn’t a lesser mountain be more appropriate? Everest is a long and arduous climb that people often work toward over a lifetime. Wouldn’t these kids be something local and attainable? Anyway, Mandy’s mom reminds her that she’s only young once and needs to make memories, which I think made my eyeballs roll even more than Mandy’s. Ben and Mandy have their Friday night routine of going to a bookstore, a movie, and then sharing a waffle at the same diner, which sounds like fun to me. And why would a parent implicitly encourage their teen to go to parties to have possible unprotected sex and get alcohol poisoning, anyway? Questionable parenting choices aside, Ben and Mandy’s snarky, entirely platonic friendship is incredibly sweet to watch.
This particular Friday night, while moonily watching yet another promposal happen through the diner window, Ben asks Mandy, “Do you ever feel like we have wasted our youth sitting on the sidelines judging people?” Oh, Young Ben, time snarking from the sidelines is NEVER time wasted. Trust.
Long story short, after being teased by a freshman and Graham himself, Ben is worried that this time is also his peak (and not even that peaky at that) and he yearns to go to prom or experience high school like the other kids have. Ben, Ben, Ben! Take heart, my friend. I’m pretty sure a kind, dorky wallflower like you is only just beginning to bloom! And, because Mandy loves him, she asks him to go to prom, but she tells him, there will be no slow dancing. Because the only thing she hates more than slow dancing is “the gender-wage pay gap.” I just…Her lines about feminism are, like, a record scratch every time. I mean, firstly, people don’t speak like that. And secondly, it just feels like it lacks any kind of substance. She’s like a walking, talking generator of trending feminism and environmental topics: #SaveTheBees, #CloseTheWageGap, #SmashThePatriarchy, #TheFutureIsFemale. I guess I wanted more substance, more feeling like there was an actual person in there, so when her views shifted there would be some greater understanding of the nuance. But back to Ben and Mandy and their, yes, Prom Pact, which they seal with their signature double tap and a waffle.
Now, all would be well, except that, in a scandalous turn of events, Mandy gets waitlisted at Harvard. The downfall! After a pep talk from Ben, which includes an actual mention of the “the future is female,” and a conversation with Ms. Chen, Mandy decides the only way forward is to get a letter of recommendation from Senator Lansing, father of school heartthrob Graham Lansing, who currently couldn’t pick her out of a line-up of one. So, she concocts a fail-safe plan to find him at the big party happening that weekend, offer to tutor him for free in AP Psych, “earn his trust,” and then get him to ask his dad for a letter of recommendation. Totally practical. Ben goes along with this plan because LaToya Reynolds will be there and because he’s curious about what he’s been missing at parties. It turns out that Ben doesn’t really like parties, but LaToya Reynolds really does make him swoon and that Mandy can’t stop herself from saying blatantly rude things about Graham when he’s within earshot, so the first iteration of the plan is mostly an abject failure. But Ben does manage to make LaToya Reynolds laugh and learn that there will be a mandatory community gardening event for the basketball team the next day. And it’s there that Mandy manages to convince Graham to let her tutor him for free. He assumes it’s because she wants a selfie with him, which I assume is really a euphemism, but she assures him there are really no strings attached, which is a lie that will come back to bite her in the ass.
After a rocky start, Mandy and Graham find their footing with tutoring and, to no one’s surprise, even start to enjoy each other’s company. She uses shooting hoops to help reinforce the concepts she’s teaching him, and then he teaches her how to shoot baskets. And let me tell you, the moment when he’s standing behind her to show her proper form to shoot a layup and he asks, “Do I have permission to touch your arm?” might be the highlight of the whole movie. Phew. It’s like Graham’s whole character shifts in an instant. He opens up. You don’t even need the whole next scene about how he coaches a youth basketball league and how he invites Mandy to go along with him and how she plays alongside the kids and how she’s worse than all of them, but has a great time anyway and how some little girl tells her that she’s the first girl that Graham has ever brought there and how this makes Mandy get a far-off look in her eyes. No. You don’t need that, because you have Graham standing behind her and gently asking if he has permission to touch her before he does.
Can I say, though, for a movie that is all about its protagonist being a feminist, so much of her character rests on how she’s so “different” from all the other girls that Graham has dated. So much smarter. Interested in him for reasons beyond his looks. Graham’s mother laughs about the other girls he’s brought home and how they weren’t too smart. Mandy makes fun of their names. And all this is happening while we’re learning about how Graham’s father has dismissed him because he’s not as academically gifted as his older brothers. How his father doesn’t consider his athletic pursuits or social status worthy of his time or accolades. How painful these dismissals are for Graham. But they’re using the same script to dismiss young women who aren’t like Mandy as vapid, silly, and empty-headed? All the time in the background of the movie girls are running up to Graham asking for selfies, like he’s some pop star. But LaToya, who is the equivalent status of hot, I think, only gets carried around by a guy once, and is otherwise just surrounded by her friends. And here I agree with Mandy, it is really frustrating to see the patriarchy affirming its dominance over women this way.
As Graham and Mandy grow closer, Ben is left alone, but who should he find but LaToya Reynolds, who has grown weary of the party scene and is looking for a little quiet-tude. Their story is actually quite charming. Ben is goofy and trips over himself and LaToya is clearly smitten with his bumbling charm. There will be the usual ups and downs and ins and outs that one would expect in a movie like this one, but with lots of 80s flavor in the background and in the music. Sometimes the references feel a little heavy-handed, and I think the movie could have stood on its own without the constant barrage, but I get why it’s there and it’s cute enough. It does give the whole thing a kind of John Hughesian aftertaste. Mandy will wear a dress that will make me question pretty much everything we’ve known about her up until then. Like, where did she get this dress? How does she feel about wearing it? There will be a huge choice that could change the course of someone’s life. There will be major misunderstandings that cause relationship meltdowns on many fronts. There will be an epic promposal that explains so much, but also defies the logic of time and space. There will be choices made that will make me struggle to understand how Mandy’s worldviews have or have not realigned, and I will spend probably far too much time wishing they had done just a little more work to clarify things so that, again, there is more nuance in our understanding of her view on promposals and the patriarchy. I won’t lie, though, the final few minutes—where they manage to highlight friendship, romance, youthful independence, and subvert a few tropes and stereotypes all to a soundtrack of “The Promise“? Yeah. I managed to, at least in the moment, forgive a lot of the movie’s missteps. Which might just be the most 80s rom-com thing about it.
Overall Rating on the Chronically Streaming Pain Scale:
Chronically Streaming 