Sugar & Spice

This chick flick had lot to offer, especially the fact that desperate times lead to desperate measures. I loved this movie- to me it was like Clueless meets Point Break. It was amazing, and i thought all performances were great.

This new line cinema film, may have been a low budget one, but it was brilliant. Marley Shelton's character of Diane Weston, may not have been the perfect protagonist for this kind of movie,but she was sweet and funny- what i found good was Rachel Blanchard's portrayal as Hannah. We saw her before playing Cher is the unsuccesfull 'clueless' TV series, and in Road Trip as Tiffany- well though those were just inconsiderable, this performance was something different. Mena Suvari made a really good Kansas. Her partial sweet/tough looks, made her seem the perfect casting decision.

All in all- this mix of comedy and drama, makes this movie a great film for all teenagers. The famous pose of the 6 girls at the police station, is certainly unforgettable.

A high school cheerleading squad robs a bank in order to support the burgeoning family of one of their own. They get the idea watching the Keanu Reeves movie Point Break and then watch movies like Reservoir Dogs and Dog Day Afternoon to figure out how exactly to pull the caper off.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Sounds like a cutesy family movie, right? The kind that warms the cockles, wherever they are. Well, almost. It's a dead-on, surprisingly hilarious comedy, with perfect off-center performances and a crisp, honest script.

The last cheerleading movie I saw (and quick, can you name more than a couple anyway? Didn't think so) was the Kirsten Dunst comedy Bring It On. This one blows that out of the water, out of the atmosphere, and out of the solar system. There's no moralizing. There's no good-girls-are-right, bad-girls-are-wrong lesson. Heck, we're talking about teenage girls pulling off a robbery! And one thing that could have sunk this movie early on was a character change. You've seen movies in which a character, faced with a new set of circumstances, does a 180-degree turnaround on how they've behaved up to that point. In this movie, you'd expect the girls to suddenly become flawless professional robbers. Not so. And while their plan has its faults, it's still a plan, buoyed by the vacant aphorisms of their leader, the pregnant and chipper Diane (Marley Shelton). Sing-songy and ebullient, the kids squabble among themselves but, in the true spirit of cheerleading and gosh-darn Girl Scout-like togetherness, they pull together as a team. Hip! Hip! Hooray!

Decent cheerleading movies are hard to come by. Come to think of it, so are any cheerleading movies. Oh, not that I'm looking, but I can name only two off the top of my head: Bring It On and the legendary, overlooked (okay, just kidding) 1977 opus Satan's Cheerleaders. But the latter's pep squad was in college, so it's different. But I digress.

Truth be told, there's not a dull moment in the movie. Diane's knocked up before the prom by her dimwit football-hero boyfriend. This guy's so stupid he gets himself fired from such seemingly unfireable jobs as fast-food employee and other glamorous retail employment opportunities. See, in the real world, he'd be upset that the luster had worn off his diamond of an image, having to work with geeks at the video store. But he's a dope, blissfully ignorant. He knows but one thing - that he loves Diane - and being such a dullard is supremely helpful to the film (and isn't easy to do; kudos goes to James Marsden in the role).

In short, a real hoot. We've seen many bank robbery movies with their own twists and idiosyncrasies; this one's one of the better ones to come down the pike. Go team go!

I had high expectations for this movie. I guess that they were a little too high, because this movie did not work. It started off great, being fast paced, biting, and just plain mean. Any movie where the parents of both the head cheerleader and the quarterback cheer about their marriage, but scream about their pregnancy...well, it can still suck.

The movie cared too much about its subjects. It had a heart for the cheerleaders (either that or it was the toning down after the shootings), and thus I didn't feel that the point of the movie was to laugh at them, but to laugh with them. This is like American Pie, where we laugh with the characters. Except the humor that could have worked was aimed at them, thus making a conflict and making many jokes not funny. Also, the timing was off on alot of the jokes. "You want to dust my a**" should have been funny, but it wasn't.

So, if you like the light-hearted dark comedy genre (of which there aren't too many...none that I can think of off the top of my head), see this movie, otherwise, stay to the biting satire of Bring it On.

3/10

Buried on both sides of the Atlantic by "Bring It On" (the latter didn't duplicate its American box office success in the UK, but at least it got to cinemas), it's to the credit of "Sugar & Spice" that there's a big difference between the two in terms of plot, characters and overall feel - okay, they are both about cheerleaders but are they really cut from the same cloth on that count? As an American journalist wrote about Stephen J. Cannell, the only real similarity between "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and "The Greatest American Hero" is that both shows involve flying.

That said, this movie is still the lesser one. One of the problems are that writer Mandy Nelson and director Francine McDougall don't seem too sure about what kind of tone it should have; it seems to want to be darker but can't summon up the nerve, its characters veer from one-note (particularly Cleo, the Conan O'Brien obsessive) to semi-real (Diane, the cheerleader captain whose unwed mother plight launches the plot), and having the movie be narrated in flashback by a rival rule-obsessed girl suggests we'll be seeing it from her POV, but it's not until some way into the story that she actually plays any kind of a role.

The movie's intentionally uncomfortable to watch, but also never especially funny - and it doesn't help that with the exception of Alexandra Holden as Fern, most of the cast aren't too believable as teenagers (and why do so many of them have first or last names that begin with the letter M? Marla Sokoloff, Marley Shelton, Melissa George [who, incidentally, I thought was playing Diane until the credits set me right], Mena Suvari, Sara Marsh...). It passes the time, and at least it's short - and give the makers credit for not trying to gloss over problems of young couples - but Kirsten Dunst and Eliza Dushku are ultimately the short-skirt-wearers of choice in this milieu.

"Sugar & Spice" could have used more of both parts of its title.

Sugar & Spice is almost a caricature of a teen movie. It is not, because it's not making fun of teens or teen movies, but has that slightly over the top smiley attitude that pushes you to that laughing place where you don't take things too seriously. Those who didn't like that movie didn't get that vibe. It is quite fun.

Now, it's not a perfect movie, the subject matter is treated very lightly, but the story, the dialogs, and the characters are all very entertaining. It doesn't bring anything new, per se, to the table, but it does it with flair, and laughs. The girls are beautiful, but not plastic perfect. The acting is simple, but sincere and adorable in certain cases.

One of the scene, when they announce they're getting married, is the perfect example of the quality and tone of the film. It and its followup scene in the car are hilarious.

If you want to see a good little known teen flick with an adult mask, that would to it.