If you’ve spent a lot of time online then at some point in time one of your friends has probably sent you a survey where you fill out all kinds of information about yourself like your favorite color, your favorite planet and day of the week. A popular question on these surveys is often to tell some secret that nobody knows about you. Well right now I’m going to reveal a secret to you that nobody else knows. So here it goes. Not only have I seen the movie Bring It On, and the sequel Bring It On Again but I’ve even seen the 2006 straight to video second sequel called Bring It On: All or Nothing. And I didn’t hate it.
Bring It On: All or Nothing focuses on Britney Allen (Hayden Panettiere) who is the head cheerleader of the Pacific Vista High School. Britney is the envy of everyone in school, dating the star football player and the likely choice for homecoming queen. Britney’s life gets turn upside down when her father losers her job. Britney’s family is then forced to move and Britney transfers to a multi-ethnic working-class neighborhood. Britney ends up at a school that is ninety-five percent black and she immediately doesn’t fit in. At first Britney butts heads with Crenshaw High’s head cheerleader Camille (Solange Knowles Smith) but eventually they try to get along in order to win a cheerleading contest that would win computers for their school. However in the finals Britney’s new cheerleading team, Crenshaw Heights, faces off against Britney’s old school Pacific Vista High School.
Now I’m not usually one to watch this type of movie but I was intrigued by seeing Hayden Panettiere as a cheerleader before her current role in Heroes. Also, if there is one thing I hate more than untalented singers who think they can act it’s the sister of untalented singers who think they can act but are equally as untalented and only got a job because of their sister. Of course I’m talking about Solange Knowles. But to be honest I found both Hayden and Solange to be good. I thought they especially had good chemistry together. I really felt they hated each other. They both also did really well in the cheerleading scenes although I guess it’s possible they had stunt doubles.
The whole plot was certainly predictable and not anything new but it was well done. A rich white girl being forced to attend a school that is nearly all black had the potential to be very over top and dumb but it really worked. Mostly because they didn’t really try to do any humorous scenes with Britney trying to fit in, most of the scenes where she tried to fit in were actually serious scenes. The cheerleading was pretty impressive too for most of the movie.
I did have two things I didn’t like about the movie. The first is at one point in the movie Crenshaw Heights decided to implement a style of dancing called krumping into their routine. As far as I can tell krumping consists of doing a “dance” that looks like you are having spasms or convulsions. It just looked really, really stupid. Especially since that was supposed to be what put their performance over the top when the other team was doing flips and somersaults that are actually impressive and actually take some talent. In reality I don’t think anybody would’ve voted for Crenshaw Heights krumping over Pacific Vista High’s gymnastics in a cheerleading competition.
The love story of this movie was also pretty dreadful. Why must movies always put some kind of love story in every single movie? I’m not anti-love story but ninety-nine percent of the time it just isn’t very good. It probably doesn’t help that the love interest couldn’t act either. But overall I didn’t feel like I wasted my time watching the movie and that’s a lot better than I expected.
