Since ”Bring It On” is a movie about high school cheerleaders, you might expect whatever plot it has to be a flimsy scaffolding for the shameless exploitation of young women in short skirts — a slice of diet cheesecake, a ”Coyote Not Quite So Ugly.” And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong.
Kirsten Dunst, who plays Torrance Shipman, the striving, energetic captain of a Southern California pompom squad, displays her bellybutton in nearly every frame of the picture, and when she’s not wearing her cute red and black uniform, she’s outfitted in pajamas, a bikini or, when modesty (or the school dress code) demands, a series of colorful sports bras.
But ”Bring It On,” directed with giddy, sometimes sloppy pep-rally intensity by Peyton Reed from a brisk, slangy script by Jessica Bendinger, is more than a low-minded appeal to male lechery — though it does feature an extended visit to the girls’ locker room, a scene in which the cheerleaders don skimpy bathing suits and wash cars (it’s a fundraiser), and of course innumerable splits, leg extensions and carefully photographed bounces. But in the post-Brandi Chastain era, female athleticism and female sexuality seem closer together than ever, and underneath this movie’s tight acrylic sweater beats an unapologetically feminist heart.
If Mr. Reed’s camera can’t help ogle Torrance and her teammates, Ms. Bendinger’s script manages to respect their hard work and their aspirations. It may be impossible to dispel the notion that cheerleading is a silly, trivial enterprise — a notion upon which much of the comedy in ”Bring It On” depends — but this movie rarely feels cynical, condescending or cheap.
Cheerleading, the filmmakers insist, is a sport, requiring discipline, timing and strength as well as, um, certain physiological gifts. One of the running jokes is that the Rancho Grande High School football team — represented by a couple of dim, clueless jerks — loses every game, while the cheering squad has racked up five consecutive national championships. And ”Bring It On” is, structurally as well as thematically, a sports movie, following Torrance and her squad through the anxieties and tribulations of a season aimed toward the climactic national championships in Daytona, Fla.
Their main competition comes from the East Compton Clovers, a mostly black inner-city squad whose crowd-pleasing routines Torrance’s villainous predecessor (Lindsay Sloane) had plagiarized. ”My whole cheerleading career is based on a lie,” Torrance laments when she learns of the theft, and the film is at its most honest and interesting when it deals with the consequences of her discovery, and her relationship with Isis (Gabrielle Union), the Clovers’ proud captain.
A whole movie, rather than just a subplot, might have been devoted to East Compton’s struggle for recognition and to the out-of-uniform lives of Isis’s squad, played with gusto by the members of the singing group Blaque. As it is, the Clovers are on hand to serve as symbols of a complexity the movie isn’t quite able to explore. They’re better dancers and better athletes than their white counterparts, and also, for all their gumption and self-sufficiency, the agents of a white girl’s moral awakening.
On the other hand, the fact that a bouncy teenage sports comedy can even gesture toward serious matters of race and economic inequality is pretty impressive, as is the occasional snarl of genuine satire. The vicious back-stabbing and defensive homophobia of the cheerleaders seem as accurate as the high school vernacular in which they address one another, and even the cheering hides an edge of hostility behind its smiling allure.
”That’s all right, that’s O.K.,/ You’re gonna pump our gas some day,” the Rancho Grande squad chants in the faces of rivals from a less affluent school district. And the opening sequence of strutting cheerleaders mocking their own power and vulnerability puts those in the audience out for a cheap voyeuristic thrill on the defensive from the start, picking up where ”American Beauty” left off.
And then retreating. ”Bring It On” is, in the end, a deeply conventional movie, which is hardly surprising given that it combines two of the most convention-bound genres in existence. In addition to being a sports movie, it’s a teenage romantic comedy, which means that Torrance must give up bad, popular Aaron (Richard Hillman) for cute, goodhearted misfit Cliff (Jesse Bradford).
Mr. Bradford, with his crooked smile and his unthreatening coolness, is perfectly suited for the role. But it is Ms. Dunst who carries the movie and unifies its disparate elements. She’s a terrific comic actress, largely because of her great expressive range, and the nimbleness with which she can shift from anxiety to aggression to genuine hurt.
No doubt with the preservation of its PG-13 rating in view, ”Bring It On” tiptoes around the issue of sex even as it flaunts its wholesome sex appeal. But in one scene, when Torrance and Cliff surprise each other while brushing their teeth, it ascends to the frothy, sublimated seductiveness of classic screwball. Ms. Dunst’s expression as she emerges from the bathroom, having done nothing more risque than spit in the sink, is perfectly enigmatic and completely convincing, a mixture of mischievous amazement and unconscious arousal. It’s a wonderfully subtle moment — exactly what you’d expect from a cheerleader movie.
Bring It On (2000)
Directed by: Peyton Reed
Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Eliza Dushku, Jesse Bradford, Gabrielle Union, Clare Kramer, Nicole Bilderback, Tsianina Joelson, Lindsay Sloane, Natina Reed
Screenplay by: Jessica Bendinger
Production Design by: Sharon Lomofsky
Cinematography by: Shawn Maurer
Film Editing by: Larry Bock
Costume Design by: Mary Jane Fort
Set Decoration by: Jill McGraw
Art Direction by: Timothy Whidbee
Music by: Christophe Beck
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sex-related material and language.
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Release Date: August 26, 2000
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