Bring It On (2000)

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Last year, Kirsten Dunst parlayed her peaches and cream complexion and radiant smile into a role as a wannabe small town beauty queen in the pageant satire Drop Dead Gorgeous. In the new teen comedy Bring It On, Dunst gets promoted to head cheerleader at a wealthy San Diego high school.

Torrance Shipman (Dunst) inherits a Rancho Carne High Toro squad that has won five national cheerleading championships in a row, most recently under the guidance of über cheerleader Big Red (Lindsay Sloane). Though she feels jinxed after a mishap with a fallen spirit stick at cheer camp (“You will go to Hades,” a fellow camper hisses at her when she lets the stick touch the ground during a game of Truth or Dare), Torrance expects a smoother transition than what she gets. On the first day of practice, a member of the squad breaks her leg in a human pyramid collapse and the team resents Torrance’s choice of a replacement, sneering gymnast Missy (Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Eliza Dushku), accusing Torrance of being a “cheertator.” “This is not a democracy it’s a cheerocracy,” she replies tartly, which doesn’t stop squad bitches Courtney (Clare Kramer) and Whitney (Nicole Bilderback) from gunning for Torrance’s job.

Worse is yet to come when Missy, who is new to the school, recognizes the Toros’ cheer routines it seems Big Red stole them from the Clovers, a squad from East Compton. Horrified at first and then humiliated when the East Compton girls show up at a Rancho Carne football game and mirror the routines back at the Toro squad, Torrance hires leather clad, trash talking choreographer Sparky Polastri (Ian Roberts). When his Bob Fosse influenced “spirit fingers” cheer bombs big time, the Toros only have three weeks to come up with a championship routine for the national finals.

If that isn’t stressful enough, Torrance also has to figure out some way to salvage the nascent romance she inadvertently snuffed out with Missy’s punkish brother Cliff. She’s also determined that the Clovers, led by her counterpart Isis, get the money they need to travel to Florida for the competition, recognizing that it will be a hollow victory for the Toros unless they compete against the best.

Unlike the recent But I’m a Cheerleader, Bring It On does not treat its cheerleaders as the subject of scorn and ridicule. Screenwriter Jessica Bendinger recognizes the pep o phobia in many of us, as well as the lingering resentment against high school’s golden girls. She confronts those feelings head-on, opening the story with a scandalous cheer that includes the lines, “I’m pretty. I’m cool. I dominate the school I’m sexy. I’m cute. I’m popular to boot.” Some of the squad, notably Courtney and Whitney, fit the stuck-up stereotype, but most of them are more like Torrance. She’s good-hearted, but naïve and, while her mother complains that cheerleading has prevented her from tackling tough subjects in school, that’s not the only area where her education is lacking. When she first meets Cliff and spies his Clash T-shirt, she asks him if that’s his band.

Above all, Bendinger’s funny, effervescent script celebrates what is most often ignored about cheerleading its athleticism. In the world of the Rancho Carne Toros, while the cheerleaders were winning five straight championships, the football team was losing all of its games. The football games are merely excuses for cheerleading exhibitions and the crowds come to see the squad perform. Cheerleading choreographer Ray Jasper and Clovers routines creator Hi Hat deserve as much credit as director Peyton Reed for Bring It On’s high energy level. A handful of truly awesome showstoppers combining dance and gymnastic prowess turn the film into a virtual 90-minute pep rally.

Unlike most teen films of recent vintage, Bring It On doesn’t reduce its focus to narrow adolescent self-absorption, but integrates issues of the world at large into the film. The film touches on homophobia, as the boys on the Toros squad face constant harassment from the football team. The comedy remains light, but issues of racism and classism are implicit as the white, wealthy Toros compete with the poor African-American and Latino Clovers. Big Red could only get away with stealing the Clovers’ routines because the Compton squad was too poor to enter cheerleading competitions. And while Torrance means well, Isis immediately rejects her offer to have her father’s company pay for the Clovers’ travel as patronizing. Of course, it’s a final, probably unintended irony of Bendinger’s script that the story is told from the viewpoint of the Toros, with the Clovers relegated to supporting roles.

With captivating performances from the entire cast, particularly the sweetly charming Dunst, the goofy Bradford, and acid tongued Dushku, Bring It On glorifies the good, the bad, and the perky of high school spirit. Even those curmudgeons who wiled away homecoming assemblies smoking in the bathroom may find themselves seduced by its bubbly, buoyant brio.

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