There was a period of about four years (2000-2004) when I watched very few movies at all. Back then, I actually had a life and spent more time going out and doing things than sitting on my couch watching DVDs. But then my son was born and I basically became a shut-in. But I digress. The point I want to make here is that I missed a lot of movies from that time period, which is why you’ll see me reviewing a lot of older titles here — like 2000’s Bring It On.
Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Kirsten Dunst stars as high school cheerleader Torrance Shipman, who begins the new year by realizing her dream of being voted captain of her squad. This is an important role at Rancho Carne High, since the cheerleaders have won the National Championship for six years in a row. It’s up to Torrance to carry on the tradition of excellence, even in the face of stiff competition from East Compton High School and their formidable captain Isis (played by Gabrielle Union).
While the national cheerleading competition poses as the main storyline, there are numerous subplots that all deal with high school life. First, there’s the new girl Missy (Eliza Dushku) who doesn’t fit the typical cheerleader mold, but who wants to be on the squad because there’s no gymnastics team to join. Then there’s Missy’s brother Cliff (Jesse Bradford) whose only role seems to be to provide Torrance with a love interest since her boyfriend leaves for college in the movie’s opening scenes. Then there’s a scandal involving the former RCH cheerleading captain’s theft of routines and cheers from the East Compton squad, which causes the current RCH team all kinds of problems as they try to prepare for the Nationals.
The film covers all of these issues in a scant 98 minutes, so don’t expect in-depth treatment on any of them.
My Reaction: I was expecting a lot more from this movie, considering the fact that Kirsten Dunst was in it, but I was disappointed. The plot contained cliché after cliché and there were very few funny moments in it at all. Plus, the dialogue seemed forced most of the time, and was extremely annoying in a wannabe-teenspeak kind of way, like the “I’m not gonna mack on you with the parentals right there” line at the beginning. Are you kidding me? People talked like that when I was in high school, a full 8 years before this movie came out. Don’t tell me they were still saying things like that in 2000!
Some of the cheers were funny, and I wish the filmmakers had given us more of those. Instead, we got a lot of practice scenes and dancing scenes. (I wasn’t a cheerleader in high school, but I seem to recall that we had a drill team to do all the dancing while the cheerleaders actually said cheers.) This made for a lot of boring moments that I freely admit fast-forwarding through.
Overall, Bring It On is just another average teen comedy. I’m not sure if today’s high school crowd would find it appealing, but I know that as an adult, I didn’t. I give the film 4.5 stars out of 10.