Starring Aimee Teegarden and Thomas McDonell. Rated G.

With Prom, Disney offers up a squeaky-clean, parent-approved teen universe where there are no mean girls, no Heathers, and no buckets of pig’s blood waiting to splash on anyone’s head at the titular event.

In what will surely run contrary to most people’s memory of that exquisite, taffeta-wrapped torture known as high-school graduation, this Prom comes fairly angst-free. Put it this way: at the movie’s climax, when the big event finally arrives, not one single partier in the crowd is shit-faced. About the biggest disaster that befalls our fresh-scrubbed, multi-ethnic gang is when the storage shed for the big night’s decorations burns down just weeks before the event.

This devastating news sends the central character, the perkily perfect A-student Nova (Aimee Teegarden), who’s been officiously trying to organize the “best prom ever”, into a tizzy. What’s worse, the principal assigns bad-boy Jesse (Thomas McDonell) to help her rebuild the fountains and untangle twinkle lights. They hate each other at first; you know the rest.

The other scattering of subplots—a shy guy trying to work up the nerve to ask the popular girl to the prom; a nerd desperate to find a date—have equally predictable, happy outcomes. On one hand it’s refreshing to see a teen movie that’s not only unabashedly cheerful but not trying to be hip. For their parts, Teegarden and McDonell are endearing and play their roles with enough conviction to keep the story from sailing into pure bubblegum territory.

But about halfway through, you start longing for any sign of a smoke pit, smuggled booze, or random act of vandalism—something, anything, that smells like teen spirit. Then again, the likely target for Prom is preteens who still hold out hope that high-school grad will be, as Nova puts it so cringe-inducingly, “our forever night”.

Watch the trailer for Prom.