“This is not a democracy — it’s a cheerocracy!”

Justin’s Rating: giggle

Justin’s Review: Wow. Talk about being torn on the issue of loving or hating a film. Bring It On had many obstacles to go to convince me it was see-worthy, the main one being… CHEERLEADERS. Now I don’t take many sports seriously (for example, my solution to the war of football is to give BOTH teams a ball, so they can live happily and peaceful), but I take cheerleaders about as seriously as anyone who is screeching and bouncing in my face while demanding that I spell things. Yet I’ll make the same revelation that many lesser critics before me have noted: Bring It On does a spectacular job of making fun of itself in a tongue-in-cheek way.

Torrance (Kristin Dunst, continuing her streak of way-too-innocent roles) is in a pit of troubles. She’s hideously pretty, she goes to a California high school, she receives captaincy of her cheerleading squad, and she is dipping into the company pool for her own dating needs. Due to a cheerleader shortage (because California is really lacking in blondes wanting to wear short skirts), Torrance recruits outside the box by getting an ex-Vampire Slayer. Missy (Eliza Dushku) is independent, sarcastic, a brunette, and has no interest in cheerleading, which means it takes a couple extra minutes for the brainwashing to sink in. Before you know it, she’s in a bikini while washing cars for money with the rest of the squad.

Now, while there isn’t much in the way of explicit nudity, this entire movie has the feel of a late-nite Cinemax special. Watching this in a movie theater by myself, I felt vaguely guilty watching 20-something “teenagers” bounce and bounce around. But that’s okay, since the most intimate situation Torrance gets herself in is a brushing teeth contest between her and Missy’s brother Cliff which is a rather brilliant scene with no dialogue. Just two people getting way into spitting and frothing.

The argument is made both in Bring It On and other sources that cheerleading is a sport in and of itself, tough and physically demanding. Therefore, we should have no right making fun of it, because you don’t see ME in a skirt doing backflips, right? Wrong. Just because something is tough to do doesn’t mean it isn’t also intensely stupid. I used to have a talent for stacking fruit, 7 or 8 pieces high; that looked pretty, but it didn’t serve any real purpose, and neither does making human pyramids and doing splits. I think the worst point of the film was that Torrance’s little brother, who antagonizes her for the entire film, is shown in the last scene wildly applauding the cheerleaders. Stay in character, why don’t you?

Despite my bickering, Bring It On is fairly enjoyable. Torrance is imbued with a sweet sense of humor, and her desire to do the right thing overcomes the sometimes lame dialogue she spews out. You might have also seen in trailers that Torrance’s squad faces direct competition with an inner city school squad, which is supposed to be the main conflict of the story, but instead is given as much time as a mild subplot. By the film’s conclusion, both squads have developed some sort of mutual respect because they’ve both leapt around and gotten applause from their families.

So even at the end of writing this review, I’m still torn. I didn’t much care for the theme of cheerleaders, but it IS pretty funny. I’ll probably even pick up the DVD, so that gives you an indication of my continued interest.

Andie’s Rating: I’m blonde/I’m tall/And always on the ball. I’m leggy/I’m fine/I write reviews online

Andie’s Review: I am so glad that Bring It On was made. It’s about time that people realized how tough and demanding cheerleading is. And I’m being completely serious when I say that, so stop snickering, fellow mutants. I was a cheerleader my freshman year in high school and it was hard enough work just being on the football squad. I can’t imagine being on the competition squad (my high school’s competition squad, by the way, are the reigning six-year State champs. Yay Cedar Falls!!!).

So anyway, besides painting cheerleading in a good light, Bring It On is also cool because it is so funny! It makes fun of just the right amount of stuff. I love the opening scene cheerleader rap thing, that was enough to make me crack up for about 10 minutes. I also love the East Compton Clovers, as stereotyped as they may be, they were pretty cool. The routines they did and the final Toro routine are both impressive as hell, even if they are way too advanced/illegal for high school cheerleading. I’m also a big fan of Torrance’s love interest, Cliff. He is such a cutie. And their teethbrushing scene is one of the greatest no-dialogue flirtation scenes I’ve seen in awhile.

The thing that made me crack up the most, however, was the flashback to cheerleading camp. If you’ve never been there, you have yet to experience true pain. Cheerleading camps, Dance/Pom camps, and Color Guard camps are four days of pure hell. Trust me, I’ve been to all three. That “spirit stick” story is really not that exaggerated. The UCA cheerleaders in charge of camp are these spazzed out wackos and your squad has to act like camp is the best four days of their entire existence in order to be awarded those stupid little sticks. My squad was usually the one squad who was always like, “Nobody really gives a ****! You wanna know what you can do with your spirit stick?”

We never did get very many.

At my first day of Dance/Pom camp, we were sitting in the lounge of the prison they kept us in and somewhere on the floor a balloon popped with a sharp explosion and my dance squad captain April turned to us, completely straight-faced, and sighed, “Someone killed themselves already.” So anyway, that is the hell that is camp.

I rented Bring It On on DVD and it has all sorts of cool extra goodies. There are a bunch of deleted scenes and there’s a neat feature where you can watch the entire movie with informative little bubbles popping up every so often. Here’s a list of some of the info I found to be interesting:

• Cheer squads were started in the 1870s at Princeton and were all-male until WWII
• Torrance’s little brother is named Justin in honor of Justin Henry, the actor who played the obnoxious little brother in Sixteen Candles
• Former celebrity cheerleaders include: Dwight Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter, Kirk Douglas, Samuel L Jackson, Meryl Streep, Madonna, and Sheryl Crow
• Most of the football players in the movie were Navy Seals who figured being extras in a movie would be more fun than the Middle East
• Missy’s tumbling pass at her tryout is the only stunt the actors didn’t perform themselves

Just a few little tidbits I found interesting and thougth I’d pass along. So anyway, Bring It On is a great tribute to cheerleading while still being funny and entertaining. It’s got hot girls bouncing around in short skirts or bikinis for the guys and cool cheerleading routines and cute boys for the girls, so everybody should like it. And by the way Justin: Webster’s defines sport as “an outdoor or athletic pastime and fun/diversion” Cheerleading fits the bill to me.

Kyle’s Rating: Rent it! Don’t buy it!

Kyle’s Review: I went to see Bring It On at the Krikorian on a busy day. I purchased my ticket and I swaggered my way to theater 10, plainly marked as showing Bring It On. There was not an ounce of embarrassment reverberating through my frame; on the contrary I was full of bluster and manliness. I was a man secure in the knowledge that not only was I announcing to God and to everyone that I was purposely going to see a movie about cheerleaders, but that I am a beautiful and unique human being. Let’s face the facts: I am beautiful and unique.

Also, I was not going to Bring It On for a Shakespearean-level of drama or an action/adventure experience on par with Die Hard. I wanted to see a movie that exists solely to show off nubile young girls “acting” in their roles as cheerleaders, and I wanted to see if my desperate prayers had been answered and my local theater had somehow received a blooper version of Bring It On that was actually two hours of Kirsten Dunst and Eliza Dushku changing in and out of their cheerleading uniforms (NOTE TO SELF: as the Bring It On prayer thing did not work, don’t rely on prayer to get out of next big midterm!).

So was I satisfied? Yeah, I guess! Kirsten Dunst is very skinny but still cute, Eliza Dushku seems like she could easily beat me up in real life (and probably would want to if she ever reads this), and there is lots of bare midriff shots and a car washing fundraiser that ironically allows us to see the cheerleading squad in bikinis (it’s like they somehow knew there would be men in the audience!). I recall this movie was about cheerleaders, Kirsten’s chest for a while, then Eliza’s, then the two of them together, then one of the friends from She’s All That comes on to play a rival cheerleader and we look at her chest for a while, then at the end we see a parade of cheerleading chests and we are pleased. Oh, of course all of these chests are covered at all times but that makes it kind of more fun as it makes your imagination work, and some other plot-related things happen around the chests. I guess if you want an objective review, you’re asking the wrong guy. Look, if you’re a guy this is worth seeing once, okay? Girls might like it too, I suppose, though I can’t think of anything to back that statement up with. Sorry, ladies.

Oh, and I have to be honest about one thing: like I said I saw this once in the theater and I was pleased. Then I was at Virgin Records and they had this playing on a television so I stopped to watch a snippet of it, hoping to catch some more Dushku action. Sadly, I removed my headphones in disgust and walked away after a few minutes. What’s up with that? Well, after you’ve seen everything Bring It On has to offer visually, there isn’t much to Bring You Back. If you think about it, our “heroes” are Kirsten’s character, a girl who is admittedly a poor student and at best builds her life around cheerleading (and I think everyone who was ever a high school student knows what a great caliber of person girls like that generally are), and Eliza’s character, who is a counter culture individualist chick (yeah!) who gets converted to Kirsten’s cause (d-oh!). These aren’t exactly role models. Plus this movie chooses to ignore the fact that after Catholic school girls in uniform, cheerleaders are the ultimate sexual creatures.

However, Bring It On apparently couldn’t figure out a way to bring sex into the equation, so we get (rather unbelievably) a group of girls who are the gorgeous titans of the school that don’t appear to be dating, with the exception of Kirsten who starts off with a sleazy boyfriend (and the implication is that nothing happened between them, otherwise Kirsten wouldn’t be the hero we need her to be) and (ooh, spoiler ahead!) get a great boyfriend at the end. Attention Hollywood: nowadays, your audience can handle sex and we can handle film characters being sexual beings. I’m not asking for highly-charged eroticism, because even I don’t want that. But an adult handling of the issue isn’t that bad a thing, especially considering the subject matter.

Oh, and I’m sorry, but male cheerleaders? Gag me with a spoon, dude. Eliza, please love me!

Clare’s Rating: like whatever OK?

Clare’s Review: so like last night i’m sitting around all like watching tv or whatever and after i’m done watching the n’sync making the video on mtv there’s like TOTALLY nothing else on so i go to the pay per view option on my tv and me and this totally hot guy i’ve been crushing on forever decide to check out Bring It On cuz you know its about cheerleaders and stuff so we figure it’ll be pretty rad and have hot chicks in it or whatever so after we order it and it comes on this really weird thing happens that totally freaks me out and convinces me that like i TOTALLY have psychic powers or something cuz like within the first ten minutes of the movie i totally knew everything that was going to happen next which completely freaked out my bf since he really couldn’t figure out how i’d be able to know but i just told him you know that i’d seen a lot of movies before and this one was a lot like those other ones so i could pretty much fill in the blanks or whatever so anyway Bring It On is about this girl who gets to be the captain of her cheerleading squad and she’s like totally pretty and has a flat stomach and these boobs that are so perky they drove me up a wall cuz it was like every three minutes she’d change into another cute cheering outfit or another cute pajama set or another cute cut off tee/tight jeans ensemble and it was totally annoying anyway she’s pretty much perfect in every way and really loves cheering and makes friends with the new girl at school whose brother is totally hot even if the guy playing him was totally like 40 or whatever and they go to this big competition where they have to cheer against these other ghetto fabulous cheerleaders who totally are way better than the perfect girl’s squad and then there’s perfect girl’s college boyfriend who was a cheerleader in high school, there’s a bunch of other cheerleaders and you know whatever they all live happily ever after or whatever. it’s kinda cute but also really lame in a lot of ways and made me bored sometimes but then i’d just stop and look over at my hunky man and kinda do this thing where i lick my lips absent mindedly even though i totally know i’m doing it cuz he thinks it’s sexy or whatever anyway that’s about all i can think of to say about Bring It On except that like there’s totally not enough nudity and that the cheering sections were really badly done cuz they were all chop edited together so there was like no way to see what they were doing really so that kind of sucked but anyway, yeah…