‘Prom Dates’ Proves the Teen-Girl Raunchy Sex Comedy Is Here to Stay, Thank God

For a while there, high school sex comedies used to be the realm of the boys. In their heyday, the genre was dominated by the Superbads, the Napoleon Dynamites, the American Pies—raunchy, goofy movies about the absurdity of being a teenager, having all this energy and nowhere to put it. Then something shifted, and we started delving deeper into the other end of the spectrum, tuning in to find out what a girl actually wants and immortalizing it in absurdist, hilarious movies like Booksmart, Blockers, and Bottoms. Hulu’s new comedy Prom Dates is a sibling of these, a hysterically funny odyssey through the highs and lows of a teen best friendship that pokes and prods at a familiar formula.

Graduating seniors Jess (Ginny & Georgia’s Antonia Gentry) and Hannah (High School Musical: The Musical: The Series’ Julia Lester) made a blood pact (complete with fainting) at 13 to have the best prom ever at the end of high school. Now that the two of them are older, wiser, with devoted boyfriends, everything seems to be going according to plan. Except, the day before their senior prom, Jess and Hannah dump their partners—Jess because he cheated on her, and Hannah because she’s actually gay—and find themselves suddenly single, with only one desperate night to find dates to the big dance.

It’s a problem, but not a huge disaster for the two pals, whose best-friend energy (frenergy?) is palpable from minute one. Gentry and Lester are whip-smart and knife-sharp in their expert delivery of every line, with the kind of runaway back-and-forth patter you usually only see between two people who have known each other their whole lives. They ping-pong off of each other in every scene, with none of the dead space that’s present in other comedy films that feel the need to let their jokes breathe. The pair and their equally brilliant supporting cast delight in writer D.J. Mausner’s dialogue, casually shooting off the funniest thing you’ve ever heard before immediately launching into the next funniest. They barely even need the anchoring presence of comedy veterans John Michael Higgins, who plays the school’s principal, and Chelsea Handler, who plays Hannah’s boyfriend’s overbearing mother obsessed with teaching her dog how to use talk buttons.

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