Bring it On


Bring it On is pure eye-candy. There's something to be said for a society where watching high-schoolers (or at least twenty-somethings who are portrayed as such) dance and bounce and be carefree is such an event.

Kirsten Dunst stars as Torrance Shipman, who has just been made captain of her high school cheerleading team. As leader of a team that has won the national cheerleading championship five times, Torrance prepares the team for their sixth win. Disaster strikes when she finds out that the former captain "stole" all the cheerleading moves from East Compton High, a poor black high school. After watching their moves being used for years, the East Compton team, led by Isis (Gabrielle Union), finally decide they too will take part in the cheerleading competition, which puts Torrance in a predicament and causes a conflict between the two teams.

The problem, if anything, with Bring it On is that it's not clear who the audience should cheer for. On the one hand, you have the poor-black-underprivileged team from East Compton who are clearly the underdogs. Yet the movie doesn't develop any of the characters and imbibes them with a stereotypical "bring it on" attitude which makes it hard to empathise with them. The movie's primary focus is on Torrance and her white-spoilt-rich-kid team from suburbian San Diego, and how difficult it is for them to come up with a new routine. I'm sure you can see me bawling my heart out for them.

The acting isn't something that's relevant. The story could've had more depth to it because of the whole race conflict, but the movie opts for vacuous fun instead (nothing wrong with that; just making an observation). Some of the choreography is fun to watch, and even though the outtakes at the end are fabricated, they are amusing. Bring it On is definitely an entertaining film and worth checking out.


Movie ram-blings || Ram Samudrala || me@ram.org