American Girls 2

In any industry you try to do things cheaper and faster for the consumer so you can compete with the guy across the street. Whether you're operating a laundromat, barber shop, pizza place, grocery store, or you're a major conglomerate with a movie studio as one of your holdings, you try to cut back on costs and boost your profits. It's competition the American way.

So what on Earth does that have to do with a sequel to a movie about cheerleaders? Well, in movies it's no different. Only here that theorem backfired: Once you have a smash hit of a film, it's your job, as a producer, to capitalize off that film's success by seeing if you can duplicate that success with a leaner and more improved product. You cut the budget, higher a second rate screenwriter, cast B-list talent, skimp on the shooting schedule which means the director and DP don't have time to setup much needed shots, which also means there isn't enough money to higher all extra material and personnel that made your first film such a huge success. Result; a film that has all of the earmarks of the previous feature, but lacks meat and its own legs to stand on. There are exceptions to that rule, but they're rare.

So it is with "Bring it on Again", a story about a cheerleader who arrives at some no-name state college, finds herself ostracized after being associated with the wrong crowd, and now has to fight (cheer?) her way back into the hearts and minds of her peers to ultimate cheer- leading triumph.

It's a cheap sequel meant to capitalize off of Peyton Reed's very entertaining high school genre film of four years before, but the social schism being addressed is never fully explored, the plot is pretty outrageous and borders on the realms of science fiction, poor Anne Judson-Yager is in over her head without any real direction from 3rd string director Damon Santostefano, and overall the cast and crew aren't there to relive nor re-imagine the previous tale. No score, little to basic editing (essentially strewing together master shots), essentially no magic whatsoever save for the cheer-leading itself which seems okay (though I'm no expert in that area).

Pass it up. Me, after donating my special edition "Bring It On" DVD to the library many years ago, I went ahead and blew some money on a three movie repackage deal that included the original film and two of its sequels, of which this film was one. Eh... it's ten bucks that could've gone into my gas tank. That's how I see it.

Watch at your own risk.

p.s. I wonder what Roger Coreman would've done with this script.

Whittier is both nervous and excited. She's just made it onto the BEST cheer leading squad (best in WHAT is never clarified). Unfortunately, the captain is rude and cruel to the other cheerleaders, so she and her best friend Monica decide to create their own squad and have a cheer off to see who will go to nationals. At the same time she is falling for the shaggy Derrick who could be perfect for her.

From the beginning this film annoyed me. The lead girl is too naive and impressionable - after one talk with her "head cheerleader" she decides to cut down on her calories and ridicule her friends - even drop them for acceptance. (Don't most girls grow out of that by college?) When she finally stands up for herself, you'll wonder what took so long, and why she felt the need to strip to make her point.

The acting is okay at best, especially from the lead, who is out shined by the girls playing her best friend and her adversary. The "comedy" is minimal, with the gag of Penelope getting hurt being very overdone. The ending was predictable and completely unrealistic as well.

This film left me with a few questions:

*What was with the constant costuming of Whittier in yellow? *Why did the guy playing the mascot beat box to the costume head before going out onstage?

*Where did the new squad find the funding to get matching uniforms and how did they manage to unify their routine within two days?

Overall:

This is nothing more than mundane teen drivel. It's an unnecessary sequel trying to cash in on the success of it's predecessor. The acting is poor and the ending unrealistic and predictable. Skip this lame flick - you're not missing anything.

I didn't expect much from Bring It On Again. In fact, I only watched it because I was under the impression that Jaime Pressly was in it, which was not the case (OK, so I confused Bring It On Again with Not Another Teen Movie - can you blame me?). But I kept watching, despite the "poor man's Reese Witherspoon" in the lead. And lo and behold, the movie is actually nowhere near as bad as people here have been claiming. It is more of a comedy than the first movie, and there is one big thing that ties it together with the first movie, which I think most people have overlooked: Both movies are saying that cheer-leading is NOT COOL. Both movies are going out of their way to show that cheer-leading is as shallow as anything can be, and clearly pointing to a dozen other things that are far cooler, but which happen not to be the focus of this particular comedy. That's actually pretty funny. These movies are not as empty-headed as they first seem.

The lead girl in the sequel first struck me as very boring in a "girl next door" type of way, but I have to admit she grew into the part very well and achieved the confidence of character to come across as a convincingly cool cheerleader (in the comedy setting, I mean) towards the end. Ultimately, she was an actress rather than just a pretty face, and that is to be commended, considering that this was a mere straight-to-video release. Somebody in the production team actually had the ambition to create a quite serious, well-written, well-structured piece of work - and they succeeded.

I rated the first movie a 7, and this one, surprisingly, qualifies for as much as a 6, despite the ludicrous end performance (apparently comprised by an almost entirely new team). It was fun. Quite an achievement, all things considered.

Don't be mislead by the title, because other than cheerleading, this movie has little (actually, nothing) to do with "Bring It On". However, I only say that so that you won't be disappointed if you were expecting it to tie in.

That said, this movie is a lot of fun, and has some great lines and superb actors. It's got more in common with "Animal House" and "Revenge of the Nerds", plot-wise, and what it lacks in character development, it makes up for in spirit, and a charming innocence.

After hearing a lot of negative comments about this movie, and how poor the acting was, I expected it to be one of the worst movies I would ever watch.

However, I actually thought the acting was very good in some points. Bree Turner was AMAZING as Tina!!! She played her role as nasty head cheerleader so well I actually wanted to go in there and tell her off! Her part was so believable, and I think she deserves props for her acting skills.

I thought the plot line was OK, but a bit copy-cat of the original. Some parts of the movie were hard to believe and a little corny, but I don't think it distracted too much from the overall message. Although the original was much better, I don't think this movie was a complete downfall.