Once in a while, I like to watch a teen movie to see what the recent crop of up and coming talent may be. Talent spotting is a fun endeavour, as is to find out how it plays out in the long run. Sometimes, there's a young actor or actress that makes my old cynical heart beat faster and that makes sitting though a movie such as Prom 2011 absolutely worthwhile.

So who was the star of the show for me? It wasn't Thomas McDonnel, who is a lovely looking lad and could easily take over the role of Jack Sparrow when whathisname gets too old to do it, or his co-star Aimee Teegarden, who is pretty enough and did a reasonable job of being quietly heartbroken at the right moments. It might have helped if there had been some kind of sexual electricity between them but I've seen more sparks fly between a man about to eat his hot dog on a New York street corner. Talking of sparks, a bright one was Cameron Monaghan who was enjoyable throughout every one of his appearances.

For me, the young actor who stole every scene and lit up the stage was Nicholas Brown. A young James Steward in the very best sense of the idea, here's a leading man in the making who is more than just a pretty face (although he has one of those, too).

To be a real superstar not just in one's youth, but also through middle age, into maturity and beyond to eventually collect the lifetime achievement award, it is not enough to be hot, sexy and vaguely troubled. There has to be more than that, the ability to be complexity manifest which in turn lends itself to a variety of roles. But there is also another strand to this, which is an additional dash of magic that is hard to find. What was particularly impressive about him was that he had the power to make everyone who acted a scene with him light up too and become more real, more alive and more interesting simply because he was there.

Nicholas Brown has all of that and then some. I won't be around in thirty years to see what's happened to his career, or whether the casting directors had enough sense to find him, and movie producers had enough sense to commission scripts to showcase him; whether he had any serious character flaws that stopped him from becoming a greatly beloved and highly respected immortal icon of the silver screen in time.

However, I wish him luck; I hope to see Nicholas Brown again and his presence on Prom 2011 made the film worth watching.

Prom 2011 Movie Information & Pictures