Prom Night in Kansas City

Filmmakers Hali Lee and Peter von Ziegesar's Prom Night in Kansas City looks at class, education, money, race, and sexual-preference biases in America through the prism of a semi-antiquated institution: the high school prom. Filmed literally in middle America--Kansas City--over a period of several years, the documentary explores how different schools, families, and students celebrate prom nights. Some schools take the whole thing quite seriously, with kids dipping into their savings to pay for tuxes, gowns, flowers, dinner, and limousines, all for the sake of keeping alive a tradition that (according to the directors) began as a working-class response to well-heeled debutante balls. But others take a different tack, such as one school that cheerfully picks an overweight, not-classically-pretty girl with a great personality as prom queen, and another where gays and lesbians hold alternative proms (which otherwise look pretty traditional, with tuxes and such). The filmmakers close with an enlightening, where-are-they-now look at some of the students featured earlier in the film, all of whom have moved on from high school into their first apartments and jobs. The upshot is that prom nights really are a blip in the overall experience of one's young life--after that, everything gets pretty hard. DVD extras include an interview with the directors. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (T. Keogh)