I love teen comedies. American Pie is one of my favorite movie ever and so is Superbad. I also am someone that do not care one bit about recycled ideas. If something is cool, i don't mind other writers/directors doing their spins on it and making something similar, as long as i am entertained. You can call it the "Clone concept" or whatever.
This movie is clearly inspired by Superbad. But the twist is they are women. BUT WAIT !! THERE IS MORE !! And i think this is kinda where the movie got all over the place. This movie is a "DEI" wet dream as every decent characters has to either be a DEI character in some form or another, or they have to be "simps/allies" if they are white male. Otherwise they are just the worst of the worst.
I am not gonna spoil it but overall the movie is not "that over the top" in general until you meet some frat boys where it goes litterally into dumb and dumber territories and portray them in the worst caricature type of characters.
Even the female equivalent, "Vodka Heather", is shown as a "strong independant female" despite her bad addictions and her over the top character portrayal.
One of the worst aspect of the movie i felt was the character of Hannah, played by Julia Lester, wich somehow manage to score a bunch of peoples way out of her league with no efforts (they have a crush on her and she barely make a move). Look, i am not against the fat/nerdy/unatractive guy scoring the chick in these movies, but it need to be earned. Same for the female equivalent. They must go out of their way to make the opposite gender fall in love (or at least get attracted) to them.
Take for exemples American Pie The Book of Love, its pretty much the end goal of one of the character who is shown as being THE GUY who can't score at all. Love the movie or not, this character had their journey to the endgoal and it wasn't easy.
Hannah not only start the movie with a boyfriend who is madly in love with her, but she had several characters way out of her league hitting on her after barely even trying. That took me out completely at times, cause unlike Jess wich is considered "decently attractive" by society standard, she is not.
Even the character of Jess, played by Antonia Gentry, got to have her forced "DEI/Woke" moments about her being "black", or to quote Kumar in Harold and Kumar escape Guantanmo Bay, BARELY BROWN, and it feel so forced because its only there to give her some kind of "yeah but i had my issues too" background moment when she seem to be a popular chick in her school.
That said despite ALL OF THIS, the movie is not terrible by any means. I actually was interested in the story and where it was going and some issues with the characters, wich were mirrored from Superbad, were interesting to follow.
There is also a few gags and fun moments in the parties that gave me decent chuckles and i apreciated them.
Not gonna lie, i am a sucker for these movies wich take place in 1 or 2 night and have our characters going into crazy adventures. They don't need to be realistic but simply entertaining. And yes that movie was in these part. I was just annoyed how often it had to remind me of how woke it was.
But i suppose someone would say "but maybe this movie was not made for you, it was made for the LGBTQ peoples". Wich i can say 50% fair enough, but 50% that i am THE demographic for these teen comedies. I watch them all and usually enjoy them, even the worst ones. So my general consensus is the movie could had feature the same characters with the same general ideas, just simply tone down the woke agenda "in your face style" while also keeping it at the core of the story. Hannah could had still be a lesbian. Jess could had still been 1/4 black.
For exemple one of the gags with Hannah discovering she was a lesbian and trying to get another lesbian hookup was funny, but the character involved didn't need to litterally look like a pornstar type of hot. She could had been a way more average looking chick and the story wouldn't had been impacted the slightlest.
Jess boyfriend at the start of the movie litterally look like a male model out of a magazine. Sure he is a rich spoiled brat, but did he needed to be "that attractive"? To me this all felt forced. To empower the 2 main characters beyond what they earned.
What made Mcloving, Seth and Evan so good in Superbad was that they looked like super dorks way over their league. And your first impression is "no way these dudes will score any chicks". And the movie play well with that.
Anyway this review was long enough by itself. Overall i am gonna give Prom Dates a 6 out of 10 because it did entertained me and i never pressed pause looking how much time was left. But it has a bunch of issues that are either cringy or ridiculous wich mean i can't score it higher.
That said, as "woke" as it was, it never even reach close to the level of cringe that Black Christmas 2019 did (on top of that movie simply being a terrible slasher regardless of the woke stuff).
