Watching this exhausting parade of twirling, tumbling, leaping, hurled-into-the-air young people was something like viewing a 90 minute Advil commercial......("What pain??" What headache?")
As one physically punishing cheer routine follows another, random thoughts overtook us......do these girls actually represent a high school or a college? Do they ever appear at any sporting events? Who exactly are they cheering for?
What's scary and sad: everyone in this movie is so afflicted and obsessed with social media.....they hardly have time to look up from texting and tweeting on their various devices to watch the cheerleading itself.......
Speaking of cyber-stuff, the plot kicks in when our lead cheer bunch is bullied on line by a creepy collection of black-leotarded, white masked, electronic-voiced rivals. They look like twitchy mimes who watched "V For Vendetta" way too many times......
These competition movies have existed long enough now to set up their own peculiar tropes.....(as in "Drumline", Pitch Perfect" and the all the "Bring It On" clones)......one of these includes putting our cheer captain lead in the position of Neo-Conservative pain-in-the-ass, stubbornly refusing to innovate in order to freshen up the squad to win a championship. This forces the lead actress to behave as an obnoxious, self-absorbed brat for almost half the movie until the screenplay instructs her in the error of her ways.....
We'll credit the movie with this much......it attempts a fairly staggering plot twist involving the identity of those ominous, mystery cheer-stalkers. And no, they weren't organized by Vladimir Putin or Kim Jung Un....
One of the characters, who's been behaving like a Marilyn Monroe airhead for comedy relief, is revealed as a cold-hearted, dead-eyed villain.......the filmmakers toss this in without spending any time considering the monumental depth and malevolence of her deception........we haven't seen anyone so toxic and two-faced since the Jason Bourne movies......maybe this hellish Harpy should get her own spin-off, 'Bring It On: #The Bitch Is Back'......
There's no sense going on about this......the movie hits its target demographic, (Not us, but definitely Beloved Daughter) with precision, throwing in gobs of spectacular athletic choreography, a touch of romance and more tweeting than Trump in the middle of the night.......and of course, the word "cheer" inserted into adjectives and nouns where it doesn't belong....(we borrowed one for headline of this post.....)
We'll leap on the air twice for this latest "Bring It On"....(uh....metaphorically only) with 2 stars (**)......now where did we put the Advil?
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