Sugar & Spice (2001)

A popular high-school cheerleader becomes pregnant by the star quarterback and turns to crime to support her desired lifestyle.

Director:

Francine McDougall

Writer:

Mandy Nelson

Stars:

Marla Sokoloff, Marley Shelton, Melissa George

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Marla Sokoloff	...	Lisa Janusch
Marley Shelton	...	Diane Weston
Melissa George	...	Cleo Miller
Mena Suvari	...	Kansas Hill
Rachel Blanchard	...	Hannah Wald
Alexandra Holden	...	Fern Rogers
Sara Marsh	...	Lucy Whitman
James Marsden	...	Jack Bartlett
Sean Young	...	Mrs. Hill
W. Earl Brown	...	Hank 'Terminator' Rogers
Adam Busch	...	Geeky Guy
Jake Hoffman	...	Ted
Nate Maher	...	Chris
David Belenky	...	Bruce
Kevin Kling	...	Factory Worker

Storyline

Jack and Diane were lovers, two crazy kids living in the heartlands. Airheaded Diane captains the cheerleading squad, who follow her through whatever she does. Jack is, of course, the football team's star quarterback. When Diane becomes pregnant, the two are thrown out of their homes and move into an apartment where they try to live on Jack's part-time salary from clerking at a video store. Meanwhile both continue in school - cheerleading and quarterbacking. When Diane realizes that they're not making it financially, she recruits the other cheerleaders to help her rob a bank. Their cheerleader oath of all for one commits them to helping her. A local hood gives them guns in exchange for their promise to put his homely daughter on the cheerleading squad.

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Plot Keywords:

cheerleader | quarterback | cheerleading squad | high school | video store | 

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Taglines:

Why would the most popular girl in school wear a mask?

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Genres:

Comedy | Crime

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for language, sex-related humor and some thematic elements

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

26 January 2001 (USA)

Also Known As:

Sugar and Spice and Semiautomatics

Filming Locations:

Webster Street & Randolph Avenue, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$11,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$5,891,176, 28 January 2001, Wide Release

Gross USA:

$13,276,953, 4 March 2001

Company Credits

Production Co:

New Line Cinema

Technical Specs

Runtime:

81 min 84 min (extended)

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital SDDS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.39 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Sugar & Spice was supposed to be a black comedy about murdering for money, but the producers thought it too similar to Jawbreaker (1999), another teen black comedy, so the screenwriter re-wrote the script to what it is now. Mena Suvari commented, "Even though it doesn't have murder its still influenced by Heathers (1988)."

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Goofs

When Jack is racing for the end zone during the football game, the camera cuts to the clock counting down as if he is "racing" to get to the goal line before the clock hits zero. In a movie that was supposed to have so much to do with football/cheerleading, it's amazing that the writer/director didn't realize that since the play started during regulation, it wouldn't matter if Jack crossed the goal line with 0:00 on the clock; however, the scene is shot as if when the clock hits 0:00 and Jack was short of the end zone, the play would end.

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Quotes

Geeky Guy: I feel totally abandon in a place that values physical prowess over mental acuity. I can't wait until all of that changes in the real world.

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Connections

References Little House on the Prairie (1974)

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Soundtracks

Ready To Go
Written by Samantha Sprackling, Tim Dorney, Andrew Todd and Jonathan Male
Performed by Republica
Courtesy of BMG Entertainment International U.K. and Ireland Ltd.

User Reviews

...and not much of anything nice.

Buried on both sides of the Atlantic by "Bring It On" (the latter didn't duplicate its American box office success in the UK, but at least it got to cinemas), it's to the credit of "Sugar & Spice" that there's a big difference between the two in terms of plot, characters and overall feel - okay, they are both about cheerleaders but are they really cut from the same cloth on that count? As an American journalist wrote about Stephen J. Cannell, the only real similarity between "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and "The Greatest American Hero" is that both shows involve flying.

That said, this movie is still the lesser one. One of the problems are that writer Mandy Nelson and director Francine McDougall don't seem too sure about what kind of tone it should have; it seems to want to be darker but can't summon up the nerve, its characters veer from one-note (particularly Cleo, the Conan O'Brien obsessive) to semi-real (Diane, the cheerleader captain whose unwed mother plight launches the plot), and having the movie be narrated in flashback by a rival rule-obsessed girl suggests we'll be seeing it from her POV, but it's not until some way into the story that she actually plays any kind of a role.

The movie's intentionally uncomfortable to watch, but also never especially funny - and it doesn't help that with the exception of Alexandra Holden as Fern, most of the cast aren't too believable as teenagers (and why do so many of them have first or last names that begin with the letter M? Marla Sokoloff, Marley Shelton, Melissa George [who, incidentally, I thought was playing Diane until the credits set me right], Mena Suvari, Sara Marsh...). It passes the time, and at least it's short - and give the makers credit for not trying to gloss over problems of young couples - but Kirsten Dunst and Eliza Dushku are ultimately the short-skirt-wearers of choice in this milieu.

"Sugar & Spice" could have used more of both parts of its title.