Siss Boom Barf
FILM: Bring It On
DIRECTOR: Peyton Reed
STARRING: Kirsten Dunst
GRADE: D
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WE GOT RACIAL TOLERANCE, HOW 'BOUT YOU? TORRANCE (KIRSTEN DUNST) IS DOWN WITH BLACK CHEERLEADERS IN BRING IT ON.
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One of the hardest lessons of the 1960s was taught (or attempted to be taught)
to liberals that patronizing good will is just a softer face of racism. Other
minority leaders addressed this issue before him, but Stokely Carmichael was at
the forefront of insisting in his Black Power movement not just on tolerance,
not just on dignity, not just on inclusion, but on the possession of the actual
reins of leadership. As we repeatedly bump up against the dubious verities of
the political correctness movement, perhaps it's time for a much-needed
refresher course. Currently in need of remedial education are the filmmakers
associated with the teen comedy Bring it On.
Written by Jessica Bendinger and directed by Peyton Reed, Bring
it On is such a slight and silly movie that normally I'd let it pass from
area screens with no more comment than a sarcastic phrase and a low grade on
the listings page. This picture, however, not only congratulates itself on its
racial sensitivity but also deserves sanction for being blind to its own
insidious prejudice.
The insipid story of Bring it On focuses on the senior year
at Rancho Carne High School in San Diego of recently elected head cheerleader
Torrance Shipman (Kirsten Dunst), a blond beauty with a lithe body, good dance
moves and a determined devotion to school spirit. Torrance has a hard act to
follow; her predecessor led the Toro squad to five consecutive national
cheerleading championships. Don't ask how the pushy character named Big Red
(Lindsay Sloane) managed to stay in high school for five years, though you will
notice that she does look to be approaching age 30. Anyway, everybody expects
Torrance to shepherd her squad to a sixth consecutive championship. And that's
a lot of pressure on a blond beauty no matter how lithe her body, swell her
dance moves or perky her school spirit.
Things go awry from the get-go when a squad member breaks a leg at
the first practice of the year. This requires a new round of tryouts (which are
in the same vein but a lot less funny than an identical sequence in The
Replacements). The new squad member, a sultry transplanted Angelino named
Missy Pantone (Eliza Dushku), reluctantly settles for cheerleading in the
absence of a gymnastics team. But as soon as Missy begins to practice Big Red's
always-successful competition routine, the new recruit quits in disgust,
accusing her team of having stolen its act from the East Compton Clovers, an
inner-city (read: African-American) school in central Los Angeles. How Missy
happens to know this is one of the picture's many thin plot points.
Well, horrors. Two cheerleading teams doing the same cheer. As
Torrance declares in abject teen anguish, "My entire cheerleading career has
been a lie!" This from an activity in which winless sports teams are
nonetheless greeted, "Thunder, thunder, thunderation, we're the best team -- in
the nation." Nonetheless, forget about the notion that imitation is the
sincerest form of flattery. In this idiotic movie, the Toros are cheer felons
who ought to be sent to Yell Hell. So many mea culpas are spoken.
Ashamed of being caught using another team's material, Torrance
apologizes, raises money so that the Clovers can compete in the cheerleading
tournament and trains her own squad in a new original routine. Is she a lithe
blond liberal or what? And then on to the inevitable showdown. Hip-hip hurray
versus siss-boom-bah. With flips and lots of booty shaking, of course.
This is all ripe cheese. And it comes complete with fart jokes,
vomit sequences, a lame love triangle and more navel than you would find in a
truckload of oranges. The last of these qualities is so central to this movie
that the filmmakers manage to work in a car-wash scene where the girls can
cavort in wet bikinis while sprawling themselves across automobiles to get
every inch extra clean. This flick doesn't quite qualify as soft-core teen
porn, but it walks the line.
Still, what's enduringly objectionable here is the picture's racial
clumsiness. The film holds the black squad up as a kind of dancing and athletic
icon. Then it congratulates the white kids for recognizing the skills of their
black competitors, all the while courting the approbation of the audience for
being so open-minded. But what the movie does not do is ever explore the
characters on the black cheerleading team. We don't visit their homes. We don't
know their ambitions. We don't know what difficulties they've overcome. We
don't know the first thing about them. In short, they are stereotypes,
sassy-mouthed "naturals" who have great physical gifts but such bad attitudes
they hardly deserve the respect the white kids accord them. East Compton: good
athletes. Rancho Carne: good people. Hiss, boo, shame on you.
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