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It almost sounded too good to be true - high school cheerleaders-turned-bank robbers, and slumber parties where they roll around together in giant piles of cash wearing only underwear and bras. But Sugar & Spice's PG-13 rating dashed the hopes and dreams of men throughout the country. The good news is that the film probably deserved an R rating, and while the slumber party money-rolling scene was left out, there is a slumber party money-throwing scene. It's not the same, but at least it's something.
Spice is about the A-squad cheerleading team at Lincoln High School who decide to rob a bank to ensure the financial security of the unborn child of the team's captain who was knocked up by the school's dreamily dumb quarterback. A silly concept, but rife with comedic possibilities, the film stretches a weak script that would have been better suited for a short into a (barely) feature length picture that, like the last big cheerleading flick (Bring It On) tries way to hard to have witty, acidic dialogue like Clueless.
Spice, which is shown almost entirely in flashback, opens with jealous B-squad cheerleader Lisa Janusch (Marla Sokoloff, The Practice) spilling her guts in a police interrogation. Lisa had nothing to do with the bank robbery, or the events leading up to it, but happily fingers the girls who were involved. At first, her voiceover and the flashback technique work well to establish the background of each of the film's characters, but it quickly becomes very tiresome. An alarming percentage of Spice is told with the voiceover, which usually signals a major problem and attempted last minute resuscitation in the editing room.
The five members of Lincoln A-team are the typical cross section of girls you'd find in any teen movie. Kansas (Mena Suvari, Loser) is the bad ass, Hannah (Rachel Blanchard, Road Trip) is the goody-goody Bible-thumper, Lucy (Sara Marsh) is the Harvard-bound braniac, Cleo (Melissa George, The Limey) is obsessed with Conan O'Brien, and Diane (Marley Shelton, Never Been Kissed) is the perpetually perky captain who becomes impregnated by Tom Cruise-clone named Jack (James Marsden, X-Men). That's right - Jack and Diane.
When Diane realizes that she and Jack don't have enough money to take care of their impending arrival, she hatches the idea to knock off the grocery store bank branch she works at after school. Diane gets the idea from watching Point Break, and she and her cheering chums pick up robbery tips from other bank heist films, like Dog Day Afternoon and Reservoir Dogs (even though the latter didn't have a robbery scene) and from Kansas' convict mother (played by an unrecognizable Sean Young, Poor White Trash).
There are big problems with the film, most notably the bizarre gestation period of the American Cheerleader (or Titimus Bouncimus Maximus). Spice starts at the beginning of the school year, but one scene where Jack measures the growth of Diane's stomach tells us it's August. To make things more confusing, Diane is seven-months pregnant at Christmas. She also sports the fakest looking stomach in the history of film.
That said, there are still a lot of really funny one-liners, and it's pretty entertaining to watch the girls bicker before the robbery while donned in Betty Doll masks and matching outfits. Spice would have made a great short and, ironically, was directed by a woman who won an award at the 1996 Sundance Festival for a short called Pig! (Francine McDougall). There just isn't enough material here to justify a running time of this length. Perhaps another robbery or two would have livened things up a bit.
1:22 - PG-13 for language, sex-related humor and some thematic elements
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