(Minor spoilers perhaps) A rousing tale of Kirsten Dunst's quest to wear many skimpy outfits

Rating: 2/10 (8 September 2004)

I recently have had the fortunate (unfortunate?) opportunity of watching the full, uncut version of "Bring It On" on my dorm's free movie channel. For some reason, I must have blocked out any evidence of this movie's existence from my mind as soon as I heard of it four years ago. I say this because as I cannot remember this major movie's release at all.
It might as well have stayed that way, because this is a horrible movie. One might look at a trailer for a cheerleader movie and go, "What a boring concept. This is probably going to be a boring, flat movie." Well, that person would be completely correct.
To sum up the plot of "Bring It On," I would have to say there isn't much of one. The primary story revolves around a cheer competition, and apparently the cheer team's old leader stole all of their routines from an inner city school. This means they have to come up with a new routine from scratch with the competition right around the corner, or suffer humiliation.
As gripping as that sounds, it's pretty hard to feel compassion for the protagonists. There isn't anything riding on the idea that "they must win," and the characters seem clichÃ© at best. Kirsten Dunst plays the new head cheerleader with a strong sense of justice, Eliza Dushku is the new recruit "bad girl," and the rest have typical valley girl accents and attitudes. The friction between Eliza and the rest of the girls seems to disappear quickly into the movie for no reason, and after that, the whole team is pretty uniformly uninteresting.
The worst part of the movie would have to be the "rival" cheer team that they had stolen all their dance routines from. I am shamed at the women who played those roles, because they've set back minorities 30 years at least. The wise-talking, street-fighting, finger-snapping group of African Americans and other minorities are a walking satire of hip-hop culture.
The biggest surprise of the movie is when I found out that it's a comedy. The reason that's a surprise is because it's not funny. There are a few cute moments, but I wouldn't say there were any guffaw-worthy scenes. A few jokes I concede that I enjoyed. "Those aren't spirit fingers. THESE are spirit fingers."
There is a bright side to this movie, though shallow it very much is. In every single scene, they somehow manage to get Kirsten Dunst in very telling and alluring outfits. They somehow manage to accentuate her breasts in every part of the movie without having to show cleavage most of the time. That being said, the highlight of the movie for me was the carwash scene where Eliza and Kirsten both were covered in soap-lather while wearing small bikinis. Honestly, moments like that were the only thing that kept me awake through the movie.