Bring it On

For this squad, the football is just an opportunity to practice their highly athletic, hiply choreographed routines. This is a champion team, and it is time for the head cheerleader to pass on the crown to her bubbly and enthusiastic successor (Kirsten Dunst).

The result, as one commentator said, is that where once teenagers went to the movies to watch adults having sex, now adults are going to movies to watch teenagers having sex. By the same token, movies like Varsity Blues and The Replacements centre on the idea that achieving a teenage ambition is all there is.

Where Bring it On turns the tables a bit is that the bimbo cheerleader is presented as an athlete in his or her own right, and it was something that had not occurred to me. Frankly I don't much care how good they are, nothing is worth sitting through something as monumentally boring as a group of men racing around a field groping and gouging one another, especially U.S. football where the players wear so much armour and can be horrendously fat, flabby dags and still play.

So what about the plot? Well a new girl, a gymnast who can only practice her skill by joining the squad (played by an ex-vampire slayer), takes one look at their fabulous, innovative moves and drags Dunst into a car.

All their moves were stolen by the previous squad leader, videotaped at games from a 'black' high school squad too poorly funded to appear on the national scheme. As so now the squad must find other choreography. Car washes, dancing, poncy poseurs, and more ensue as the two teams raise money and work on their routines.

Widely regarded as an opportunity for a lot of young actresses to show off their 'moves' the attempt to wrap the story up in a racial issue does little to raise the level. Despite the female locker room scenes, most male viewers have reported extremes of boredom.

Thin.

Like us on facebook