760. Bring It On (2000)

Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Eliza Dushku, Jesse Bradford

Director: Peyton Reed

Running Time: 98 mins

Bring It On is an American film about a high school cheerleading troop who discover that their previous captain has been stealing routines from an inner city squad, and in a bid to restore their reputation, the new captain attempts to make an original routine to help their school win the championships.

Now, if you’re looking for a film that will require absolutely no concentration or brain power to get through and potentially enjoy, stop right here, because this is the film for you. Obviously, it’s a generic high school film, however it’s mixed with your average sports film, which gives it the opportunity to be totally predictable but engaging without having to build its own story.

The ironic thing about this film is that the whole message of the school girls’ attempts to win the championships again is to be a bit original, but I can think of few less original films than this. If you’ve seen a typical high school film, you’ve seen this, and if you’ve seen a generic sports film, you’ve seen this too, because there’s nothing about this story that really offers anything different, whether it simply be jokes, characters or random scenes.

What I do find interesting about this film, however, is that it doesn’t actually do anything for the majority of its runtime. Not even is there the blossoming of a cheesy romance (well, there is, but you don’t really see it until the last scene), and the characters don’t develop in any way whatsoever, meaning that you do effectively have an hour and a bit of watching pretty much nothing.

However, I’ve got to confess that I actually liked the final scenes at the cheerleading championships. This is the first time anything actually happens in this film, so I was relieved by that, but I was also just impressed by the choreography and the dancing. Of course, the outcome was obvious, being a sports film like this, but the final dance bit was a lot of fun to watch, and I was actually engaged for the first time in this film.

Overall, this gets a 5.2, because nothing actually happens for about 80% of the film, while its message is all mixed-up and just a bit annoying, but it gets fun towards the end, and is easy-going to watch.