Throwback Thursday: Bring It On: All or Nothing (2006)

Moving, especially as a teenager, is never fun or easy.

Bring It On: All or Nothing (2006) is the third movie in the Bring It On film franchise. Britney (Hayden Panettiere) is a high school senior who is at the top of the social food chain. She is both the captain of the cheerleading team and dating the star quarterback. Everything changes when her family moves to the “rougher” side of town.

Britney would love to join the cheerleading team at her new school. But she has two problems. The first is the captain of the team (Solange). If she does again put on the uniform, she is going to compete against her friends and former classmates.

Though it tries to bring back some of the equity and racial issues of the first film, it doesn’t quite hit the mark. Though it is direct to video and rises slightly above Bring It On Again (2004), the narrative is still just a little too paint-by-numbers for my taste.

Do I recommend it? Maybe.

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Flashback Friday: Bring It On Again (2004)

When a film is successful, the obvious next step is a sequel. The question is, does it hold up or is it nothing more than an easy cash grab for the studio?

The 2004 straight-to-video movie Bring It on: Again is the follow-up to Bring It On (2000). Whittier (Anne Judson-Yager) and Monica (Faune Chambers Watkins) are college freshmen who want to join the cheerleading squad. When they are rebuffed by the team captain and queen bee Tina (Bree Turner), Whittier and Monica decide to form their own team.

The challenge is the following: only one squad can go to nationals. Will Bree and her establishment team win or will misfits and outsiders have their chance to shine?

There is a reason it skipped theaters and went straight to video. The generic “David vs. Goliath” narrative is predictable almost to the point of becoming boring. While its predecessor had at least some tension, there is none to speak of in this movie.

Do I recommend it? Only if there is nothing else to watch.

Flashback Friday-Bring It On (2000)

Bring It On is one of those movies.  On the surface the plot is trite and predictable. The screenplay contains lines that are outright dumb. But somehow, it was successful and led to a series of sequels that went from bad to worse.

Torrance Shipman (Kirsten Dunst) is newly crowned captain of the Rancho Carne High School cheer leading them.  Their team is poised to take an easy victory at the national cheer leading championship for the sixth year in a row. She discovers that their routines are stolen from The Clovers, a cheer leading team from the inner city. Isis (Gabrielle Union), the team captain wants to see her team take their rightful place as winners in the cheer leading championship.

While Torrance and her team prepare original routines, Isis and her team need a way to get to the championship.

This is the type of movie that re-runs on cable when the station does not know what to put into an empty time slot. Shakespeare and Oscar worthy, this movie is not. But it does make a very interesting point about race relations in America, even if it is couched in the story of two rival cheer leading teams.

Do I recommend this movie? Why not.