Bring It On

BRING IT ON

Rating: B-
With the regional competition only weeks away, cheerleader Kirsten Dunst discovers her squad has been stealing its choreography from an inner city team. Dunst whines, "I can't believe it. My entire cheerleading career has been a lie." Thus is the tone of this entire film: drama with an underlying current of satire. But what director Peyton Reed ultimately realizes is that in order for the audience to care about the outcome of the plot, the satirical aspects have to be downplayed in favor of a serious approach. What results is a film which starts out with its tongue firmly in cheek but which gradually changes before our eyes into a sincere treatise about rival cheerleading squads. And it actually works fairly well.

When the girls hire a professional choreographer at the last minute to try to salvage their routine, a Bob Fosse look-alike shows up with a military demeanor and some strange ideas. The scene is funny, but its effect is greatly diminished if you don't catch on to the Fosse reference. Another funny (but familiar) sequence involves the auditions for an open spot on the squad. Along with the usual line of under-qualified and under-motivated applicants comes Eliza Dushku, who explains, "This school doesn't have a gymnastics team, so cheerleading is my last resort." She gets the job.

It seems inevitable that movies about high school life will include some sort of romantic subplot. Okay, I can accept that the same way I accept having to clean the toilet bowl once a week. It's just that this particular romantic subplot is particularly stupid. Dunst starts out with a boyfriend one year ahead of her, so that he's going off to college but promising that nothing will change between them. Start a pool with your friends as to how many minutes into the film the scene will come when she catches him in bed with a coed freshman. Things only get worse when she meets Dushku's brother, and the two of them fall for each other while pretending not to fall for each other. Then they spend most of the film fighting about absolutely nothing. In case you hadn't noticed, romantic subplots tend to suck.

The choreographed cheer routines are well done, and enhanced by carefully integrated camera moves. At the very least, you have to concede the filmmakers put in a lot of hard work on these scenes, and they're actually quite fun to watch. When the film comes down to a climactic battle at the cheerleading competition (as you just knew it would), the predictability is forgiveable in light of the entertainment value of watching the squads dance and perform all sorts of synchronized gymnastics. As the centerpiece of the film, the cheerleading routines ultimately deliver the goods.