Any film starring gorgeous girls in tight cheerleader uniforms was always going to be a hot tip for me, and whilst I was expecting very little from Bring it On I nevertheless enjoyed myself throughout. The film is slight indeed and appears to give scant attention to the individual motivations of most of the key players but it's another one of those teen films which is simply there to be fun, it's not trying to raise any moral or social questions bar cheating is wrong.
Torrance Shipman (Dunst) is the recently crowned captain of the all-conquering Toro's high-school cheerleading team who must face the horrible revelation that her previous captain stole all their winning routines from an inner-city team, marshalled by the fearsome Isis (Union). Battling against her own teams lax attitude and several conspiratorial team mates on one hand, and her feelings for new girl on the block Missy's (Dushku) brother on the other the film is a race against time to develop and implement a series of new routines better than anything they've used before.
Dunst is cute and dancy, Dushku spunky and the rest of the cast is reasonably well developed even if their machinations are fairly obvious to spot (the cheating boyfriend, the snobby rich kids) and the film brings up a few other things to keep the interest going. The football teams massive losing streak and the school's greater love of the cheerleaders than them, the inclination towards homosexuality that the male cheerleaders may or may not have, it's all there. Dunst's relationship with Dushku's brother Cliff (Jesses Bradford acting a lot like John Cusack) is there merely to lighten the mood and is a nice reversal of typical male/female teen romantic situations.
The downside is that the whole film is based almost completely around the 3 or 4 fantastic dance scenes. While they are truly magnificent the rest seems like filler and you almost wish the whole film could have been set in the 'final' competition so that we could have seen more of that. The inner-city team from East Compton, while billed on the video box as an integral part of the film, are also little more than a bit of competition for the Toro's. I expected the film to be split more evenly between the two teams but this was not the case.
Coming down hard on a film like Bring it On is akin to kicking a puppy, you want to but it's big dolesome eyes and spirited behaviour make you just want to scoop it up and cuddle it. It's no Cruel Intentions but then neither is it a Disturbing Behaviour and as such it just scrapes into my 'rent it' bracket. |
