Perkily Blonde
"Bring it On" is what I call a one watch wonder, you will be pleasantly surprised and entertained the first time you watch it but sadly bored on subsequent viewings. The reason being is that "Bring it On" is a shallow movie all about the visual humour and energy which works that first time but then offers nothing the second time around. As such it's hard to criticise it because whilst it means that "Bring it On" is ultimately shallow it does its job which is to amuse with a sports comedy of sorts revolving around cheer leading.
With Big Red (Lindsay Sloane) having moved on Torrance Shipman (Kirsten Dunst - Wag the Dog) is selected as the new captain of the Toro cheerleading squad and straight away she encounters issues when an accident during training leaves them a cheerleader short. Having picked the sarcastic Missy (Eliza Dushku - This Boy's Life) during try outs Torrance also has other problems from discovering that the routines she inherited were stolen by Big Red from another cheerleading squad to a cheer mutiny to quash. But there are also issues of the heart as despite dating the older Aaron (Richard Hillman), Torrance finds herself falling for Missy's brother Cliff (Jesse Bradford).
So the main basis of "Bring it On" is that Torrance Shipman is now in charge of the multi award winning cheer leading team and has various issues to deal with. These issues go from recruiting a new cheer leader, stopping a cheer mutiny as well as coming up with a new cheer when she learns that previous head cheer leader had been stealing them. Running along side this you have a touch of romantic trials and tribulations before culminating in the big cheer leading competition, well it is a sort of sports movie. The irony of this is that the storyline works and nicely feeds from one element to the next yet it still seems quite shallow.
Part of the reason why "Bring it On" ends up shallow is that whilst we have the drama surrounding Torrance being in charge there is no real depth to it. But that is not the main reason, the main reason is that like watching cheer leading it is all about the energy and visual entertainment and as such this is simple visual humour. Cheer leaders falling, training sessions, getting emotional and stressing as well vomiting before a big comp is not exactly clever and that is what is missing. It's not that there isn't any clever humour, some of the actual cheers are strangely funny but they are but a few moments in a movie which delivers a lot of simple and obvious humour riding a wave of energy to get us to the big climax.
Much of this energy comes from Kirsten Dunst who bounces her way from scene to scene be it when she is being really perky or when she is panicky. Again we are talking no depth just energy and visual humour which is the same with Eliza Dushku as Missy, the sarcastic rebel who joins the cheers. I could go on because every performance is about the energy which makes it all very tongue in cheek.
What this all boils down to is that "Bring it On" should entertain the first time you watch it with its tongue in cheek look at the perky world of cheer leading. But it is a movie you will only want to watch once because there is nothing beneath the energy to make a second watch any more entertaining.
