Prom Pact Parent Guide

Mandy Yang (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) views high school through a single lens: as a pathway to Harvard. She finds high school social life trite and juvenile, so she wants to get it behind her as soon as possible and move on to the university of her dreams. With her best friend, Ben (Milo Manheim), she’s managed to avoid every party, sporting event, and dance. When she learns that her Harvard application has been waitlisted, Mandy scrambles to get her life back on track.

Her best bet is to get a glowing letter of recommendation from someone impressive…someone like their Senator (Christopher Shyer), who just so happens to be the father of one of Mandy’s fellow students. Graham (Blake Draper) is a school legend. He’s the captain of the basketball team, a shoo-in for Prom King, and has his pick of the girls. But academics aren’t his strong suit, and that’s Mandy’s chance: she offers to tutor him through his AP Psych class in the hopes that it will give her an opportunity to meet his father and persuade him to write a recommendation letter that will get her into Harvard. Along the way, though, she starts to realize that Graham might be more than the braindead jock she took him for, which is an unexpected complication. Worse still, in her quest for a recommendation, she’s neglected to make time for Ben, who might just need her help now more than ever.

Disney+ original movies are either serious attempts at film or the new distribution service for Disney Channel made-for-TV movies. This is quite firmly the latter but written for an audience old enough to tie their own shoelaces. With mild cursing, teen drinking, and some sexual innuendo, this is marketed at a teenage audience; not kids.

The TV-14 rating is for real but not all the bad behavior goes over the edge. Mostly, it’s just teenagers making bad choices that hurt themselves or their friends, and then learning lessons about self awareness, judgement, and the importance of being a good friend. All standard after-school-special stuff. I never said this was an original film – it isn’t. It’s a shambling mess of tropes that have been pulled out of a thousand other teen romance flicks and which offers no original insight or creative touches.

The mediocrity is to be expected. What irritates me is the handling of Mandy’s character. She’s painted as a hardworking, ideologically and ethically driven young woman who’s willing to put in some work to support the causes the believes in. The film seems determined to make that out to be a bad thing – she’s too tightly wound, too feminist, she cares too much. She just needs to learn to love the abrasive, insulting, socially insensitive rich jock with a silver spoon wedged somewhere the sun does not shine. It’s not the worst teen rom-com I’ve seen, but it’s nothing special. If you’re looking for a teen romance, then you might as well watch this one – it’s almost indistinguishable from its peers.