MANILA, Philippines — For a guy in his 30s doing research for a film, going to prom was surprisingly fun.

"I didn't know how much I loved prom until I went to five of them this year," jokes Joe Nussbaum, who is director of his own “Prom,” Disney's coming-of-age comedy (opening on July 20 across the Philippines). "It's such an amazingly good feeling."

"We walked into a lot of high schools to scout locations, and it can make you feel unnerved. You remember it all: the stress, you see kids arguing, or someone walking down the hall looking lonely. And that all comes rushing back.
It's not pleasant visiting high school as an adult, and I thought prom would be the same sort of thing. But it wasn't."

Though the movie will be a lighthearted story, complete with standard high school character archetypes of geeks, preps and jocks, Nussbaum wanted to capture the intensity of emotion that comes from one of the most memorable (or notorious) nights in adolescent life.

Defining moment

Aimee Teegarden (TV's “Friday Night Lights”) stars as the know-it-all good girl who runs the prom committee and finds herself drawn to a guy who couldn't care less about it (newcomer Thomas McDonell).

"It's set in your head when you're a little kid — prom is that defining moment, when you get to look back on your school career and have a moment just for yourself," she says.

Young actor Joe Adler plays a dim and peculiar student named Rolo who is one of an ensemble of familiar though slightly skewed characters in the high school story. He's not quite a nerd, definitely not a jock, but not an outsider, either. The cute girls he's working with on the prom committee don't believe his story about a girlfriend from Canada.

Teegarden is definitely one of the latter, playing teacher's pet Nova Prescott, who finds herself stuck working with bitter outsider Jesse Richter (McDonell) after he gets blamed for setting the prom decorations on fire.

The film deals with a reality that many long-term teen couples face: graduation and life at separate colleges.

At the real proms, "kids were like, 'Hey! You look great! Omigod!' They're all dressed up, and they're hugging," Nussbaum says. "And it's because they're almost done."

By "almost done," what he means is that most adults forget prom is really a goodbye party. Graduating seniors will soon be going their separate ways, perhaps never to reunite, and never with the same closeness.

"High school elevates all the highs and lows in life," Nussbaum says. "Everything is a big deal. It's supercharged emotionally."