spirit fingers for everyone

Cheerleader drama: Next to Kirsten Dunst & Rihanna, how does Bring It On: TheMusical stack up?

Cheerleaders always rule — on the stage or in endless movies.
Photo by Michael Lamont
A scene from Bring It On: The Musical
Photo by Greg Mooney
You'd better bring it. It's Bring It On.
Photo by Craig Schwartz

You don't have to be a cheerleader to love Bring It On — it's one of the best high school movies of all time.

So in honor of Bring It On: The Musical playing at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts through Sunday, I rewatched the original Bring It On with Kirsten Dunst and the so-terrible-it's-kinda-awesome Bring It On: All Or Nothing starring Hayden Panettiere and Beyoncé's little sister, the best of four (yes, four) straight-to-DVD sequels.

The musical picks up a few plots elements from both films — the cheer captain transferring to an inner-city high school, finding love with a DJ., etc. and it totally, um, brings it when it comes to gymnastic spectacle.

But how does it compare to the movies? Allow me to break it down.

Best Lead Character Name
Winner: Campbell, Bring It On: The Musical
Frankly if this was a competition for the weirdest thing the writers think a blonde cheerleader from SoCal might be named, Whittier from Bring It On Again would be the champion. (Seriously, Whittier? Is she a cheerleader or a liberal arts college in Ohio?)

But alas, Bring It On Again is so terrible I can't even bring myself to enjoy it ironically.

Campbell is not only a somewhat unique yet believable name, it's also a set-up for comedy. By the time she makes it into the cool clique, she's gone "from cream of mushroom to chicken and stars." Only a Warhol reference could be better.

Best Sassy Sidekick
Winner: La Cienega, Bring It On: The Musical
The sassy black sidekick has been so overdone it's hard to even tell them apart anymore. Props to the musical for changing it up by including a drag queen named after a Los Angeles boulevard.

Best Guest Appearance
Winner: Sparky Polastri, Bring It On
You could argue the biggest star is actually a pre-Umbrella Rihanna playing herself in All or Nothing. But global pop stars aside, the most memorable scene in the Bring It On franchise is when Upright Citizens Brigade founder Ian Roberts shows up as the choreographer with spirit fingers and a sharp tongue.

I'm not sure who else could deliver a line like "I will attempt to transform your stiff, robotic routines into poetry written with the human body," and also rock a black unitard.

Best Villain
Winner: Eva, Bring It On: The Musical
Look, it wouldn't be a cheerleading movie without a couple bitches. Bitches are to cheerleading movies like mullets are to Monster Jam. But Eva makes the girl from Single White Female look tame, and seems to have a lot of fun doing it.

Best White Girl Learning to Be Hip-Hop
Winner: Julia Stiles, Save The Last Dance
I'm sorry but Julia Stiles in Save The Last Dance is always the answer to this question. You know it, I know it, and even though they can't say anything official right now, the Juilliard judges know it too.

Most Embarrassing White Girl Trying to Be Hip-Hop
Winner: Hayden Panettiere, Bring It On: All or Nothing
Nothing is more cringe-inducing than when the tiny cheerleader from Heroes learns to dance out her anger by krumping. Krumping! Oh man.

Do I even need to mention she ends the movie in camo cheerleading gear, including a do-rag? It's the most awkward I felt watching Panettiere onscreen since she told Ellen about her boyfriend's giant penis.

Worst Cheerleader
Winner: Solange Knowles, Bring It On: All or Nothing
Solange spent most of her time in BIO:AON staring with dead eyes and calling Hayden "white girl." (Oh . . . snap?) Also, shouldn't cheerleaders be, I don't know, peppy?

Solange is more of a wet blanket. Plus she totally does not get that Hayden's krumping is going to take them to the next level.

Best Cheer-Off
Winner: This scene, Bring It On
As far as stolen cheers go, let's talk about "Brr, it's cold in here/There must be some Toros in the atmosphere." I've been wondering for 10 years — what does this mean?

Are Toros cold? Are they like the co-worker who always turns the A/C down to 60? Because I am not cheering for that asshole.

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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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