The Prom!

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Hollywood musicals remind me of community theatre. You recognize everyone, and you're proud of them all for doing it, but no one can quite hit the notes.

The Prom checks all the feel-good boxes you'd expect it to check. These awful, cynical Broadway people go check out a town in Indiana that is refusing to let a young lesbian go to the prom with her girlfriend. While they're there, the awful Broadway people... become slightly better people. And the town? Well, the town is slightly less homophobic, I guess. 

One of the main themes of the film, though, is that the solution to being a lesbian in Indiana (one of the show's first, beautiful, songs includes the lyrics note to self: don't be gay in Indiana) is to find people on the internet in other places using social media. Or were those people also in Indiana? I was a little confused on this point. Anyway, the way to be queer in Indiana, according to The Prom, is to get on the internet and find some other queer people. Of course, the people she finds, whether they're in Indiana or elsewhere don't actually help her solve the homophobia in her town/school. They do, however, give her emotional support and a sense of identity. Which, of course, is what this film itself is also designed to do. Now, I obviously have nothing against feeling like one belongs and feeling part of a community. But in The Prom, the solution to the work of combating homophobia and changing people's minds is to acquire a sense of self and be true to who you are. 

This is not much as solutions go, but it is better than the other solution, which is executed by Andrew Rannells in a cringe-worthy number in a Westfield Plaza. What Rannells' character does is point out to the local high schoolers that they're being hypocrites when it comes to their lesbian classmate. He tells them that the Bible prohibits tattoos (this is not exactly true and a matter of debate among believers), that the Bible prohibits sex between unmarried people (no debate on this one), that the Bible prohibits divorce and remarriage, and maybe there was another thing... shellfish? I am confusing this song with a musical number on YouTube that Jack Black and a bunch of other celebrities made to do precisely this same thing before the homophobic Prop 8 amendment passed in California in 2008. That video, it is worth noting, failed to convince a majority of allegedly liberal California voters using exactly the same reasoning that works quickly on these Indiana teenagers. My own parents voted yes on Prop 8, though I had been an out gay man for seven years. Maybe they just hadn't seen "Prop 8 - the Musical"?

The idea that these young people simply need a more enlightened way of looking at things – an enlightenment that folks in New York City already possess – strikes me as really condescending. The central lyric in this song is love thy neighbor, which is a very cool and fundamentally Christian principle, but let's be honest, the problem here is who gets to count as "thy neighbor". Christianity has been very, very good at excluding people from this category whenever it needs to. I also think that telling other people they're being hypocritical is bad argumentation. The other people can always just shoot right back that you are being hypocritical about something too. And you are. You know you are. And you know who else could do a little work at loving their neighbors? All of us. So it seems to me that not only are Christians picking and choosing which parts of the Bible to enforce, so are the non-Christians who are deciding which neighbors they want to love. It's all just so smug.

Sidebar: I really liked Keegan-Michael Key in this movie. He's the funniest person in the film. And I liked all of the teenagers. They were all excellent. And I loved Mary Kay Place. More Mary Kay Place, please. I also really love the music from The Prom – especially when any of the young people are singing, and the show itself is really funny. It's scripted as a delightful, hilarious satire that hits its mark well.

The thing that feels weird about the movie version of The Prom is that everything in it feels serious. Obviously, it's not realistic; it's a glitzy (in fact, I love all the shiny costumes!), candy-coated musical. But it's all played straight. No one in it is actually an asshole; there's no bite. We never actually get to laugh at anyone. The satire is there, sure, underneath Ryan Murphy's film, but his film doesn't actually poke fun at the Broadway characters it's supposed to be mocking. Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman never really look stupid. The film actively makes fun of Andrew Rannells' character, it's true, but actually not that much. The big "Acceptance" number that takes place at a monster truck rally is originally hilarious, but the film cuts it short before Streep's character starts singing. It's as if Murphy wants to prevent us from laughing at this Broadway diva.

This all makes a little more sense when I realized that the original musical is obviously designed to make fun of people like Murphy and Rannells and their this is a really important story that people need to hear sort of nonsense – the kind of bullshit we heard everybody spout when The Boys in the Band was released on Netflix earlier this year. The Prom is supposed to be making fun of liberals and their hypocrisies. And yet here Murphy is making a completely earnest version of this satirical show. He can't conceive of the story's satire because it's aimed at him. It's weird, and I didn't like it. 

But I don't know what the deal is with critics saying James Corden's performance is homophobic. I don't see it. Why is it homophobic? Because his character is a sissy? I ain't got nothin' against a sissy. His portrayal of a gay man is no more or less femme than Rannells'. Are all gay men on screen supposed to act butch and if they don't it's homophobic? Sounds like liberal hypocrisy to me.

Also I wish Meryl Streep would take a break for a while. I said it.