Bring It On (2000)

User Rating:

5.9/10   

Director:

Peyton Reed

Writer (WGA):

Jessica Bendinger (written by)

Release Date:

25 August 2000 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Sport

Tagline:

Backstabbing. Spotlight-grabbing. Secret-blabbing. A cheerleader's life is all that.

Plot:

A champion high school cheerleading squad discovers its previous captain stole all their best routines from an inner-city school and must scramble to compete at this year's championships.

Plot Keywords:

Championship | Cheerleading | High School | Sports Bra | Cheerleader

Awards:

2 wins & 7 nominations

Cast

Kirsten Dunst	...	Torrance Shipman
Eliza Dushku	...	Missy Pantone
Jesse Bradford	...	Cliff Pantone
Gabrielle Union	...	Isis
Clare Kramer	...	Courtney
Nicole Bilderback	...	Whitney
Tsianina Joelson	...	Darcy
Rini Bell	...	Kasey
Nathan West	...	Jan
Huntley Ritter	...	Les
Shamari Fears	...	Lava
Natina Reed	...	Jenelope
Brandi Williams	...	Lafred
Richard Hillman	...	Aaron
Lindsay Sloane	...	Big Red

Also Known As:

Cheer Fever (USA) (working title)
Jump (USA) (working title)

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for sex-related material and language.

Runtime:

98 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital | SDDS

Certification:

Australia:PG (TV rating) | Iceland:L | Malaysia:U | South Korea:15 | Netherlands:12 (DVD rating) | Netherlands:6 (re-rating) | Netherlands:AL (original rating) | Argentina:13 | Australia:M | Chile:TE | Finland:S | France:U | Germany:o.Al. | Hong Kong:IIA | Mexico:B | New Zealand:M | Norway:A | Singapore:PG | Spain:T | Sweden:Btl | UK:12 | USA:PG-13 (certificate #37512)

Filming Locations:

Oceanside, California, USA

Company:

Beacon Communications

Trivia:

In the last scene during the Awards ceremony, the "editor of Cheer Fashion Magazine, Ms. Brandi Tattersol", is Director, Peyton Reed's wife.

Goofs:

Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Torrance is staying at Missy's house, she walks into Cliff's room while he's playing the guitar. His left hand never changes position on the neck, yet he's "improvising" a constant succession of chords.

Quotes:

Kasey: Courtney'll get captain. The guys like touching her butt.
Darcy: Yeah, she's got a lot to hang on to. What's the plural for 'butt'? On one person, I mean.
Carver: She puts the "ass" in "massive".
Darcy: You put the "lewd" in "deluded".

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Dance Flick (2009)

Soundtrack:

Shake A Lil' Something

Fresh, intelligent, fiercely self-aware comedy.

This delightful comedy uses its ostensible theme of cheerleading rivalry to comment on its own genre, the teen movie. Given a genuinely exciting reinvention by 'Clueless', and reaching a peak with the likes of 'American Pie' and '10 Things I hate about you', the genre is in danger, as all successful genres are, of exchanging its wit, visual exuberance, engaging playing and agreeable sentiment for cash-hungry formulae and all-round laziness.

'Bring it on' falls into neither of these traps, but is aware that its genre is exhausting itself, and raises a number of pertinent issues. do filmmakers, like the Toro cheerleaders, continue their success by ripping off others' tricks? Is it possible to be original any more, or is the best we can hope for a clever spin on older, wider sources (this, of course, applies to cinema and all art in general)? Most pertinent, and 'Road Block' had already touched on this, is it time we jettisoned the toothy, white, middle-class young, and their oh-so-harrowing traumas, and allow a more representative teen demographic into the tacitly racist genre?

'Bring it on' may not entirely escape this last accusation - the black cheerleaders have no real humanity of their own, we are not given the same insight into their backgrounds and personalities as the white girls, beyond catch-all under-privilege. They are a mirror in which the whites can examine their complacency or flaws and correct them - literally so in many scenes, where the whites 'reflect' the blacks' movements, and the latter distort them in return, thereby commenting on them.

However, this touchy racial subject matter has a major benefit on the narrative arc. The plot is the old stand-by: a team of underdogs against the odds, triumph against circumstances and expectations. This would be tiresomely formulaic, except there are two teams in the film with equal claims on our attention and sympathies - it would be unthinkable for a Hollywood film today to have poor black people lose against pampered whites, but every stylistic decision - the humanising of characters; the rites of passage and socialising-of-misfits narrative; screen-time etc. - favours these whites. This creates a genuine tension, added to little asides (such as Torrence's brother's T-shirt, 'Cheerleading = Death') that make a familiar narrative interesting, problematic and unpredictable.

This is not to deny the familiar pleasures of the genre - the beautiful, clothes-shy young stars (the film gets to leer and satirise such leering!); the witty dialogue and bitchiness; the screenplay sharp about traditional issues of power and community; revelatory, stylised dreams and memories; the unforced energy. 'Bring it on' is a rare instance in the last few decades of a musical, and the various cheerleading routines are exhilerating and inventive, revealing to many a hitherto hidden purpose of a much maligned group, while still retaining the right to tongue-hollow that cheek. (AND a Shakespearean finale, where the actors come back after the curtain, and show us it was all play).