It's prom season again, and for parents and teens alike that means spending almost a thousand dollars on a dress you will wear once and more than likely throw on the floor of a beach house in a fit of hormone-driven passion. That's not even adding in the hair and make-up, the limo rental, the secret booze fund or the rental on a hotel room or other den of iniquity.
Yes, we miss going to prom more than we miss those cherry pies from McDonald's, and that is saying something.
So since the rise of the teenager in the '50s, proms have become like little Oscars ceremonies, where picking the right dress and the right date is almost as hectic an undertaking as any Hollywood starlet fumbling for an Alexander McQueen and the perfect arm candy or beard.
At best, you wear the thing to dinner and the prom itself for six hours and throw it in the back of your closet, and when you leave home, your father sops up oil in the garage with it in disgust and regret since it helped get you knocked up and now he has to pay for that little bastard you had since your numb-nuts boyfriend joined the army to skirt his responsibilities. I love you but you make me wonder where I went wrong.
Of course, Hollywood came to idealize the prom as the most important moment in a young girl's life, probably more than getting a college diploma. Because being a self-sufficient person in society with a wealth of knowledge is lame and dumb compared to an acne-rocking bean pole buying you dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen. I'm going to make a great dad.
OK, here are a few of the best prom-related teen movies, including one, Just One Of The Guys, which probably shouldn't qualify as a teen movie, since it's more like Boys Don't Cry but with William Zabka. Nonetheless it's a great flick about a college student going undercover as a teen boy for a newspaper story. And sorta hot.
Carrie gets a bucket of pig blood thrown on her and she kills everyone. Just like my own prom, but without the blood or death.
The best part of the movie was probably the end with the nudity and whatnot.
She could have dated Duckie instead, but you know how them redheads are.
Sweet Lord, did these kids rent out Studio 54 for their prom?
Drew Barrymore is normally a cutie, but in this she looks like a bleach-blonde Edward Scissorhands.
It's fun to think of Grease not as a glimpse into teen life in the '50s, but as Bud from Urban Cowboy as a time-traveler trying to fight communism in the McCarthy era.
Oh, back in the day when Lindsay Lohan was not only sexy but also hilarious. Now she's hilariously sorta sexy, and sadly this could be the best movie she will ever make.
There will soon be an American Pie 4, with the original crew reunited for their high school reunion. Nothing will ever beat the first APwith the pie-fucking, and sadly, like the above, this will more than likely be the most popular movie many in the cast will ever be in. Sorry, Jason Biggs.
More people should get into this movie, released in 2004, about a Christian school and the cost of religious shortsightedness. And it has Macaulay Culkin and Mary-Louise Parker going for it too.
"Lose your blues everybody cut footloose," squeals Kenny Loggins as Kevin Bacon makes decades of Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon all the more easier.
Really? A choreographed scene set to Fatboy Slim? Man, 1999, you had it going on. Oh behave!
