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35 out of 44 people found the following comment useful :-
Energetic, Well-Scripted Fluff, 20 February 2001
Author: Daniel J. Fienberg (d_fienberg) from Los Angeles, CA

"Cheerleaders are dancers who have gone retarded," says Sparky, the modern dance-influenced choreographer who from $2000 dollars a pop teaches cheerleaders the mysteries of Fosse-inflected "happy fingers." Bring It On, which was a surprise hit in the fall of 2000, clearly believes that cheerleaders are far more than hoofers gone to seed. Despite the frequent jokes at their expense in the film, Bring It On shows cheerleaders are spirited, athletic, graceful, and most importantly, relevant to the 21st Century. Colorfully shot, attractively cast, and snappily written, Bring It On is hardly a great movie, but it's perfectly appealing for most people and I'd guess that the millions of cheerleaders and former cheerleaders nationwide will get a lot more out of it.

The plot is simple. It's like Rocky. Or Varsity Blues. Or any other sports movie you've ever seen. New captain of the five time national cheerleading champions Toros, Torrance (Kirsten Dunst) is shocked when the new girl on the squad (Eliza Dushka), a gymnast, tells her that all of the routines that made the squad famous were stolen from an inner city school in East Compton, two hours up the coast. Determined to prove that they can do it themselves, the Toros go through a fairly short journey to self-empowerment. There's a pounding bass line, lots of teens in short skirts, some fun flipping, and a lesson about being true to yourself and believing in others.

The film also takes on any number of myths about cheerleaders. Are male cheerleaders all gay, or do they just like grabbing girls' rears? The answer, of course is a little from column A and a little from Column B. Are cheerleaders all airheads? Well, the issue of whether or not these girls go to class is done away with in two minutes at the beginning of the film. From that point on, education, books, and homework are never mentioned. Any occasional signs of intelligence are held up to ridicule, though these "sweater puppets" are all quick with a witty retort, so they must have something going on upstairs. And finally, is cheerleading a sport? Well, this film comes out firmly on the side of yes.

For all of its verve, Jessica Bendinger's script is too reductive for the movie to be taken very seriously. The white girls are obviously upper scale and spoiled. Naturally the white girls don't have any sass at first and naturally they borrow it from their African-American neighbors. The black girls are supposed to be poor. Not that that's really depicted in this day-glo colored world.

In fact, through the wonders of Hollywood Central casting, the squad from East Compton actually looked even more racially homogenous than the "Buffys" from San Diego. This is an inner city high school that has a cheerleading squad featuring a dozen girls with identical light complexions and straight hair. The racial assumptions at work here would be offensive if the movie placed any premium on reality. Instead, as directed by Peyton Reed, everything is colorful, glossy, and easy on the eyes. The intricate cheerleading routines are mostly shot from strange angles or awkward close-ups to make it impossible to tell if the cast is actually doing any of the cheering stunts at all.

When Kirsten Dunst makes good small movies (see The Virgin Suicides or Dick), nobody goes to them. So I suppose it's fitting that this movie was a smash. She's always an entertaining screen presence and for now she's still young enough that it isn't ridiculous for her to keep playing high school characters. How her career progresses as she matures remains to be seen. The rest of the cast seems like they were picked from the set of a WB series. Now since I kind of like a number of WB series, I don't mean this as an insult in any way. The Warner Brothers network has proven a good training ground for attractive young women to read catchy dialogue and everybody in Bring It On seems very skilled with the zingers. And as the aforementioned Sparky the choreographer, Ian Roberts is just hilarious and his scene is easily the funniest part of the movie.

In the end, Bring It On is fairly satisfying. It's also amusing to note the strange directions that this movie is able to stretch the limits of the PG-13 rating in terms of language and certain forms of implied sexuality. But that's neither here nor there. Bring it On gets a not-to-be-ashamed-of 6/10 from me.

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36 out of 50 people found the following comment useful :-
Flimsy stuff done rather well, 22 October 2000

Author: Chris Docker (eyeforfilm) from Scotland, United Kingdom

This is a movie where more talent than necessary has been invested in a film basically aimed at entertainment-seeking adolescents, people interested in dance routines, and a few older men who enjoy watching young girls jump about. It follows the fortunes of an award-winning cheerleader team and the hapless football team they support.

A film about cheer leading, something that is, as far as I know, a uniquely American phenomenon, sounds pretty cheesy. The remarkable thing is that the acting and dialogue raise it a bit above the minimum required and the cheer leading dance sequences are a revelation for anyone who thought it was just about waving arms in the air and shouting support for the football team.

Gabrielle Union (10 Things I Hate About You) and Kirsten Dunst (Drop Dead Gorgeous & Virgin Suicides) were both cheerleaders at school - did this help with the authenticity? The amazing routines are quite dazzling to watch - requiring a very high level of stamina, physical fitness, athletic ability and dance technique. The overhead panning brings them almost to the level some of the old song and dance movie scenes with synchronized dancing. Synchronized dance in itself is difficult stuff, but fast paced synchronized dancing (to a great soundtrack, by the way) involving major aerial throws, difficult jive moves and lots of personality thrown in, is quite an achievement.

The film never takes itself too seriously, from the football announcer who says at the end of the match, "our next defeat is scheduled for next Tuesday", to the out-takes while the credits roll, the attitude is firmly tongue in cheek.

The script includes plenty of teenage bitching reminiscent of Clueless (adolescents often seem to show their intellectual prowess at clever, and often vicious repartee, that is all par for the course), but the acting is convincing and even the awkward issues of race and homosexuality are handled well. One cannot but help congratulate them for making a good film out of such a flimsy premise.

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24 out of 28 people found the following comment useful :-
Quite enjoyable, 7 September 2000

Author: Boyo-2

This movie was extremely enjoyable and I recommend it. The characters are not annoying for the most part, and I especially enjoyed seeing new faces Elisa Dushku (Missy) and Jesse Bradford (Cliff). They have screen presence and should be in front of the camera for many years to come, especially Elisa, who is really very beautiful. When you look at her, there's so much there, unlike most actresses whose faces do not say anything. You can tell there is alot going on in her mind just by her face.

The screenplay is intelligent and very funny and aside from a slow stretch or two, I really liked the movie. It is not like "Clueless" or anything else, which of course is a good thing.

One of my favorite scenes is when Cliff and Torrance (Kirsten Dunst) are brushing their teeth. Its probably a throw-away scene and there is no dialogue, but it was really great, for me at least.

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23 out of 28 people found the following comment useful :-
A Terrific Movie For Teens of All Ages, 6 September 2000

Author: kljucec9 from Quincy, MA, U.S.A

I thoroughly enjoyed "Bring It On". The film's brisk pacing was perfectly suited to its theme, thanks to director Peyton Reed, the writing smart, sharp, and consistently and authentically funny,(as well as, at times, genuinely thought-provoking)thanks to writer Jessica Bendinger, and the acting solid all around. I also liked "Bring It On" for what it didn't have-alot of tired, cliched boy-girl relationship stuff, and/or gratuitous sex/nudity. The opening dream/cheer sequence was a moment of sheer, brilliant comic/satiric movie magic, and later, when the professional choreographer shows up to help the Toros out, he almost steals the show. But what impressed me, perhaps, most of all about "Bring It On" was the wonderful chemistry between the two beautiful-and talented-young female leads, Kirsten Dunst and Eliza Dushku.

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24 out of 34 people found the following comment useful :-
Good (clean?) fun!, 13 September 2000

Author: jesus2dot0 from San Francisco, CA

I am not going to make any excuses. This was an excellent film for all ages. So many of the positive reviews I have seen prior to this one have had to make disclaimers (e.g. yes, it was childish...) but I will not do so. I am going to be confident in the intelligence of anyone reading this to understand that the quality of a film always has to be taken in the context it was meant to be viewed in. Bring It On is an excellent farce making fun of The Stereotypical Cheerleader. At the same time, the characters were very real, well played, and easy to empathize with. The movement (dance?) was lots of fun to watch. I also felt that the characters were much more realistic than many teenage characters are usually portrayed in film - more sarcastic and intelligently witty and sexual than usual. I think this is good, because many films give the impression that all teenagers are naive and childish, when in fact this is not necessarily the case. I must admit though that I couldn't help thinking that certain things had to happen the way they did for the sake of Political Correctness, and that is disappointing, but from the filmmakers perspective understandable. It was good to see a little bit of gay-friendliness in the film, which is rare to find in any films.

Overall, I thought it was a lot of fun and I left the film feeling good!

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15 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
A guilty pleasure!, 22 March 2003

Author: Pro Jury

This film does not aspire to be more than it is. Accepted for what it is, BRING IT ON is a perfect 10.

The quest here is the national cheerleader championships held each year in Orlando, Florida. In real life, the young competitors are tiny, thin-legged kids with braces. In BRING IT ON, all of the cheerleaders are fully developed amazingly nice looking So-Cal starlets. The result is eye candy perfection!

BRING IT ON has the right mix of good-natured fun and old fashioned sex appeal. A bikini car wash. Pajama sleep-overs. Cheerleader pom-poms every place! Each actress's smile lights up the darkest of nights. Pure American fun.

Speaking of fun, please don't miss the ending credits. BRING IT ON is an instant modern day classic that stands up to repeated viewings. Highly recommended for what it is.

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16 out of 21 people found the following comment useful :-
Fresh, intelligent, fiercely self-aware comedy., 6 February 2001

Author: Alice Liddel (-darragh@excite.com) from dublin, ireland

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).

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19 out of 27 people found the following comment useful :-
Cheer-Worthy, 7 March 2001

Author: great_sphinx_42 from The Poppy Field, OZ 69666

Interestingly enough, one of the most tired and boring cliches in both film and high school has been the subject of two genuinely enjoyable, if fluffy, movies in less than a year. I speak of course, about cheerleaders and both 'Bring It On' and 'Sugar and Spice'. But while 'Sugar and Spice' was campy and surreal, 'Bring It On' is a self-consciously serious movie advancing the idea of the cheerleader as athlete. While this idea is an honest and accurate one, it's one that audiences will only take so far. Cheerleaders may indeed be finer athletes than those on the sports teams they cheer for- I'd believe it, although I've never been a cheerleader and only rarely watch them on ESPN. I do know, though, that 'sissy, girly' activities are very frequently more difficult than 'tough, manly' activities, but try telling the boys that- or a movie audience. No matter how many big-budget and/or 'true story' movies are made wherein football is a metaphor for life or boxing is an affirmation of the greatness of the human spirit, even the most fascinating stories about sports like gymnastics or figure skating are strictly television movie-of-the-week fodder. In this atmosphere, you cannot make a cheerleading movie serious. You have to make it a joke. The smart folks behind Bring It On, though, realized that if they could strike a certain balance they could fulfill expectations but also get their point across. So they filled their flick with cute, peppy girls like Kirsten Dunst- always a delight, and well-cast here as a golden girl with a conscience- and snappy, irreverent jokes. They have a PG-13 locker room scene and a bikini carwash. They also have broken bones and high stress- very real factors in the lives of competitive cheerleaders. The squad is co-ed, and we get to know two of these curious, maligned creatures commonly known as male cheerleaders. One of them *is* gay- and an extremely well-adjusted, likable and "non-faggy" one, at that. The other is straight, and as horny as any frat boy in Animal House. We also have a tough girl named Missy transferring from L.A., along with her cute brother Cliff and the news that the Toro squad's cheers are not "100% original", as they had believed. Unfortunately for Kirsten's character Torrance and her Rancho Carne Toros, their ex-captain stole all their prize-winning routines from an East Compton squad (which are perhaps overly rude, even given the circumstances), that will be going to Nationals for the first time. So what's a cheerleading squad to do, except experience various pratfalls on the way to coming up with their own routine and competing and learning something about valuing your own strengths? It's better than it sounds, surprisingly- and refreshingly- enough. As for macho posturing at sports movies, the fact that this was a sueprise hit and 'Sugar and Spice' was not might just be a sign that there are audiences too smart to believe that any movie about female athletes must automatically be completely silly. What a surprising- and refreshing- change.

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11 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
May the best moves win!, 29 August 2001

Author: Michael O'Keefe from Muskogee OK

Torrance Shipman(Kirsten Dunst)becomes the new captain of the high school cheer leading team that takes pride in winning competition championships year after year. She discovers that the cheers and routines for the last several years have been stolen from another school's squad. Torrance relies on a reluctant gymnast named Missy(Eliza Dushku)to convince the cheer team to learn new material to take to the next state competition. What a shame it is that the football team is so awful that the schools pride is in the cheerleaders. This is an interesting eyeful, but actually just another vehicle for the enticing Miss Dunst.

Fine support from:Pua Kapiolani, Tsianina Joelson, Clare Kramer and Nicole Bilderback. If you have a cheerleader fetish, you will think this romp deserves an Oscar. Nonetheless enjoyable.

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11 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
THE MOST DEPRESSING MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN!!!, 29 August 2000

Author: hireswell from New Jersey, USA

Seeing "Bring It On" was more painful than having my wisdom teeth removed!! How this film made 17 million dollars in one weekend is even more beguiling. Is this what teenagers today relate to or were there just a lot of dirty old men who wanted to be teased by scantily clad adolescents? This film wants to be R rated but stay safely in the PG-13 zone, so what we get are ugly camera shots that are positioned just above the frontal nudity format.

The plot: A 5 time national champion cheerleading squad has to redeem itself after it is discovered that their award winning routine has been stolen from a much more talented inner city cheerleading squad. It's supposed to be a comedy but the only thing that made me laugh was the fact that this film was made. The young characters are so absorbed in cheerleading that you wonder how they plan to make a living after they graduate from high school: they barely acknowledge the fact that they have classes to go to. None of them seem to have any genuine emotions and all of them are downright annoying. If these kids were in "Friday the 13th" people just might cheer for Jason.

As I was watching it I began to realize that each scene was getting worse and worse. Some examples. The laborious scene where the cheerleaders audition a new member for their squad: the captain insists on the weird girl while the other cheerleaders complain saying the process is supposed to be a democracy, their corrected and told it's a "cheerocracy". Then the captain is later referred to as a "cheertator". There is also the scene where a choreographer, who is recycled out of every dance movie ever made, trains the girls. Amongst other things he tells one girl to starve herself to get thin; that's just a wonderful idea to put into a teenage girl's head. Then there are the scenes with the inner city cheerleading squad that so tirelessly stereotype African American speech and manner that I was amazed that this film was released in the year 2000 and not 1950.

What's depressing is that as this movie played I actually heard young people laughing. This is humorous to them? Then I came to the conclusion that as long as they keep going to movies like this we'll keep getting movie like this. Perhaps one day there will actually be a film that shows what it's truly like to be a teenager and it might even star actors who aren't in their thirty's. Until then we're stuck with this AWFUL, TRITE, APALLING, HORRENDOUS, ODIOUS, REVOLTING, HIDEOUS, LOATHSOME, REPULSIVE, IMMATURE, NIGHTMARISH, HORRID PIECE OF TRASH!!!!!!!!

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