Bring it on

The concept of being able to take on any challenge that comes your way. Could be used as a Tough Guy catch phrase.

I know what you're all thinking -- Cheerleading movie. Inane, socially irrelevant meaningless tripe. But I saw this movie by accident and I couldn't have been happier. Not that it was a great film, or hell, even a good one. It was, however, hilarious. It all requires the correct frame of mind. If you take the movie seriously, you will be hopelessly dissapointed. However, when one attemps to laugh at the utter stupidity of the film, a whole new world of enjoyment is present. Not only did I laugh, I laughed harder, louder, and 90% I laughed when the rest of the audience was dead silent. So, I feel everyone should check out this movie, as long as they realize what they are about to see will be one of the worst films, ever.

"This isn't a democracy, its a cheer-ocracy and you're being a cheer-tater."
--"Bring It On"

First of all, let me voice a potentially unpopular opinion - cheerleading kicks ass. If you've ever watched professional cheerleading competitions, you probably agree with me. At its core, competitive cheerleading is really synchronized gymnastics. Now, this movie actually used a bunch of professional cheerleaders to make up the majority of its cheerleading cast, and so the choreography of the entire movie is fantastic.

Second, there's the plot. There are a couple of different plots going on here. Primarily we have the cheerleading competition plot, focusing on the tribulations of the cheerleading team captain, played by Kirsten Dunst, when she discovers that all of the cheers her squad has been doing for the last four years were stolen from an inner city cheerleading squad. Our captain wants to be ethical and still win. Some of her squad want to be unethical and win, and some want to be ethical and give the competitions this year a pass. Drama ensues, some of it damned funny. Then we have our typical love interest plot which is actually a sort of love triangle plot made palatable by the fact that the male protagonist is cute and has a lot of good lines, and his sister is a main character who keeps giving him shit.

Third, we have the dialogue and scriptwriting. Folks, it was just damned good. I'm not saying this script was great literature, but it did a great job of capturing the patterns and nuances[ of the speech of the population it tried to portray, while at the same time making the lines better and more interesting than what you'd actually hear at a high school.

Fourth, we have the eye candy. Lots of it. I'll freely admit that I think that Eliza Dushku is one of the most lickable women on the planet, although she is frightfully skinny. The captain of the inner city cheerleading squad is also quite attractive, as is our male protagonist.

Fifth, the ending was satisfactory. I lived in fear the entire first time I watched this that they were gonna end it in a way that would have pissed me off. Instead they ended it in a way that was fair to both sides of the conflict, and which I think made an important point about the nature of winning.

Sixth, there are so many little bits throughout the movie that are utterly hilarious. The song our love-interest/male protagonist writes, for instance, is hilarious. And the opening sequence is brilliant.

If you are like most Kirsten Dunst fans, then you have probably seen this film a few times, bought the DVD, perhaps watched the special features and commentary. Perhaps then you went on to watch the movie again with the French language option selected*. One day you may find yourself watching the locker room scene in slow motion when it will hit you like a ton of bricks!

This movie has a lot of plot holes in it!

Lets start off with the standard teen film problems. These are common to nearly all teen films, in fact they are more like genre rules than plot holes. But lets go over them anyway, just in case you are unfamiliar with the genre.

• Everyone is full of money, and the high school age kids all have new cars (except Cliff, who has a classic car, which is common for "cool" characters).

• No one has parents except for the main character. Try going back a watching a few other teen films, you will probably notice this rule, only the main character has parents, never anyone else.

• None of the characters have part time jobs of any kind.

• And of course, the final one, everyone looks and acts like they are in their mid twenties.

Now that we got those out of the way, lets start moving onto the more specific plot holes in this film, of which there are many.

First (but not foremost), neither Cheerleading squad has a teacher as a sponsor. Most schools won't even let you have a chess club without a teacher as a sponsor, yet the 5 time National Cheerleading Champions have no adult supervision whatsoever, and neither do their rivals.

This film does some very strange things with sports seasons. At the beginning of the school year it is supposed to be Football season, which it is, until they visit East Compton. Apparently it is Basketball season there. But when they come back to their normal school it is Football season again. Football and Basketball are not played at the same time in High School.

Speaking of sports seasons, apparently the football season lasts all year long at their school, because they practice at a football game 3 weeks before the National Championships (which are in May).

Any Varsity Cheerleading squad is going to have a 50 percent turnover each year, as half the squad graduates. Yet in "Bring It On" they show the squad at the end of one year, and then at the start of the next. The only people who graduate are "Big Red" and "Aaron". The squad shown the next school year is all the exact same people, with no new ones added.

Now, I am not sure how big of a deal stealing routines actually is. But I remember watching the cheerleaders a lot back when I was in high school, and the cheerleaders from the other schools mostly did the same cheers as the ones from my own school. In fact, I attended a high school basketball game tonight at a small private school, and the cheerleaders there (both teams), were doing cheers that I remembered seeing in high school a decade ago.

But that is OK, because "Big Red" couldn't have possibly stolen those cheers in the first place. High school sporting events are held on fairly regular schedules, yet "Big Red" had time to make a bunch of three hour drives (each way) to videotape the East Compton games. She simply couldn't have done that because she would have been cheering at a game for her own school whenever East Compton had a game.

Then there are a bunch of minor problems. Like "Cliff" getting the loser sneeze, he seemed a bit too cool to have had that happen to him (and why in the hell did the teacher announce him as new, the film had made it out to be the first day of school). It seems that Aaron left for college on a day that Torrance already had classes at high school, which was kind of strange. Cliff is also a pretty remarkable guy, because he managed to somehow make a very professional sounding song for Torrance, despite the fact that he had already shown how questionable his guitar skills were (and then there is the part where his voice changes into someone elses after the rest of the band comes in on the song).

Now in closing, I will leave you with the funniest part of the entire movie, which is a brief snippet of conversation between Torrance and her little brother Justin.

It's not my fault you're in love with a big gay cheerleader Who won't return your phone calls.

Aaron is not gay!

Oh, so someone just made him become a cheerleader?

He's just...busy!

Yeah. Busy scamming on guys.

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