PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com "We Put the SIN in Cinema"
I grew up in a family that didn't recognized Elvis Presley as the King of Rock ‘n' Roll. A day or two after Elvis died, I remember asking my dad who the new King would be, assuming it would be something like naming a new Pope. He snorted and said `It's still Dylan,' before walking off and muttering something about Elvis stealing the black man's music. It's the kind of thing that sticks in a little kid's mind.
Bring It On invokes a similar theme of white people ripping off ideas from black people. Only instead of music, it's high school cheerleading routines. And the white devils almost got away with it, too.
Kirsten Dunst (Virgin Suicides) stars as Torrance Shipman, a senior at Rancho Carne High. As the film opens, Tor has a nightmare about appearing before the entire student sans clothes. It's no wonder – the perky student has a lot on her plate. Her boyfriend is leaving for college, her mom keeps preaching the importance of concentrating on schoolwork, and she just became captain of the school's five-time national champion cheerleading squad.
The apparent victim of an ancient cheerleading curse, Tor's first day as captain involves the serious injury of one of the squad's integral members. Her leadership is called into question by two bitchy classmates who accuse Tor of acting like a `cheertator' simply because she insists on holding tryouts for the opening on the prestigious team. The audition uncovers a amazing find – a transfer student named Missy (Eliza Dushku, Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) who wants to join the team because Rancho Carne doesn't have a gymnastics program. More importantly, Missy has a hot brother (Jesse Bradford, A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries).
Tor's curse continues at the squad's first practice with Missy, when the transfer student drags her captain to watch a cheerleading troop in East Compton. Apparently, the former Rancho Carne captain had been stealing cheers and routines from this under-funded school and presenting them as her own. The truth was never discovered because the East Compton school could never afford to attend the state tournament. The revelation caused the crushed Tor to exclaim, `My whole cheerleading career has been a lie!'
Bring It On's trailer makes the film seem like it's going to be an un-politically correct battle against a white and black, but most of the film focuses instead on Tor's desperate attempts at creating a decent routine on her own. There's a lot of witty banter and slang that reminded me of Clueless (like when Tor announces that Missy is `the Poo'), and the film reaches its inevitable conclusion at the Cheerleading Championships in Daytona.
Sure – a lot of Bring It On doesn't make sense (why would Rancho Carne bother participating in the state finals when they automatically qualify for nationals as the defending champs?), but the film is funny enough to make you not bother caring. It's full of well-choreographed dance numbers that put the crappy waltzes in Love's Labour's Lost to shame.
Bring It On is the directorial debut of Peyton Reed, who has directed some of television's best comedy shows (Upright Citizens Brigade, Mr. Show). The script is from another first-timer (Jessica Bendinger) and, while it isn't a great triumph in filmmaking, I thought the little things added to the screenplay added greatly to the overall experience (like the fact that Rancho Carne means, literally, `Meat Ranch'). Stick around for the closing credits and several decent outtakes.
1:38 - PG-13 for sexual content and adult language
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews