Prom King

With a huge Netflix deal and the power to green-light just about anything, Ryan Murphy has become the ultimate insider. And his work is suffering.

- Jackson McHenry

Twenty minutes into his Netflix adaptation of the Broadway musical The Prom, it becomes clear what kind of movie Ryan Murphy thinks he has made. Broadway diva Dee Dee Allen (Meryl Streep) and fellow star and very gay friend Barry Glickman (James Corden) are on the bus to Indiana, where they plan to raise hell in defense of a lesbian teen denied the right to take her girlfriend to the prom—a publicity stunt designed to repair their damaged reputations. No sooner do we learn this than Barry says, sincerely, that he has always dreamed of showing up his childhood bullies by doing “something important.” Dee Dee curls up next to him and coos, “That’s exactly what we are doing—something important.”

The original musical had a straightforward premise, one as old as The Music Man: Big-city outsiders roll into town with a “helpful” scheme meant to benefit themselves, only to learn how to be selfless. Under Murphy’s direction, however, a satire of celebrity activism becomes a love letter to showbiz—in which doing good for the publicity can be good in itself.