Eliza Dushku

Product Details

Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Eliza Dushku
Format: Closed-captioned, Collector’s Edition, Color, DTS Surround Sound, Widescreen, NTSC
Studio: Universal Studios
Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
ASIN: B00003CXMP

Totally Fun, Fresh & Absolutely Amazing!!

I have been a fan of this movie since I first saw it - it is definitely one of the best movies out there. You can’t go wrong with "Bring It On": from the music, to the acting and even the cheering, this movie is a true classic. "Bring It On" is very funny and you will definitely laugh with Kirsten Dunst and Elisa Dushku (and generally I’m not a huge fan of either one of them) and by the end you won’t be sure which squad should or will win, which is great because most movies of this sort are very predictable. I’ve seen this movie countless times and every single person I know adores it also!

Bring it on doesn’t really bring it at all

Okay, first, the reason I saw this movie - Clare Kramer. I’d met Clare the day before at a convention, where I went to get her autograph because of her work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. After that, I wanted to see her in her other best known role, as Courtney, one of the cheerleaders in Bring it On.

Bring it On follows high school cheerleader Torrance (Kirsten Dunst), beginning with selection as the head of her school’s award-winning cheerleading squad. Seems the squad has won Nationals five straight years and is on the verge of a record-breaking sixth win. But Torrance will find her reign as captain riddled with challenges.

The first is when one of the other cheerleaders breaks her leg, forcing the squad to look for a replacement. Torrance loses the support of Courtney and Whitney (Nicole Bilderback), the princesses of the squad, when instead of choosing Whitney’s little sister, she goes with the much more talented Missy (Eliza Dushku, another Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum), a recent transfer student from Los Angeles who only tried out for cheerleading because this school doesn’t have a gymnastics program. But Missy isn’t much interested in putting up with Courtney and Whitney’s crap, and so Torrance has to woo Missy a bit to get her on the squad ... introducing Torrance’s main two headaches for the movie.

The first of those two is Missy’s brother, Cliff (Jesse Bradford), who has developed a crush on Torrance and who Torrance also likes a little, but she’s got her own boyfriend (Richard Hillman), a recently graduated cheerleader who, unbeknownst to Torrance, is enjoying his freshman year at college (specifically, enjoying his female collegians) more than she realizes.

But the second is the bigger problem. See, Missy has seen the squad’s award-winning moves before, and drags Missy to a school in East Compton that features an all-black squad that has never been able to go to Nationals, but their moves have taken first place the last five years running. As it turns out, Torrance’s predecessor, "Big Red" (Lindsay Sloane), had been ripping them off for quite a while. They aren’t happy about it and make it a point that this year, they’ll go to Nationals for the main purpose of exposing the fraud.

This all makes for a muddled plot that isn’t as confusing as it reads. The whole film is light and airy and about as air-headed as cheerleaders are often represented. It’s a bit racy for a PG-13, but still harmless for the most part. Perhaps the most annoying part is the abuse of the world "cheer" ("This isn’t a democracy, it’s a cheer-rocracy"); it was reminiscent of the Smurfs replacing every other word with "smurf". And the ending was completely ("totally") predictable. But over all, this is still a pretty okay movie. It was never threatening to be Oscar material, but it’s still light fun.

For Buffy fans like myself, Eliza Dushku and Clare Kramer play pretty much the exact same characters they played on that show; take away the cheerleading uniforms and give them super-powers, and Missy and Courtney become Faith and Glory right before your very eyes. An added bonus, the original music is composed by Christophe Beck, who scored Buffy throughout the WB years.

Excellent

I really liked this movie, Kristen Dunst in one of her first appereances did an excellent job on the screen this time. If your looking for a teenage movie this is the one.