Bring It On
Very rarely do I tend to watch certain films i’ve already seen, especially comedies and those that I remember from when I was younger. I stay away from re-watches due to the ridiculous fear that it will simply not hold up at all, and I'd much rather have my nostalgic and biased view act as my opinion on the movie, and simply ride off my nostalgia high instead of forming a more mature opinion.
Bring It On is actually one of the first movies that I have an actual concrete memory of watching. My mom watched it quite frequently, and I remember also watching it occasionally while she would paint her nails. It’s a pretty obscure memory for me but one that has always stuck with me for some reason.
Tonight I chose to re-watch Bring It On, pretty much knowing as soon as I pressed play, I was putting that memory and my supposed opinion on the movie in jeopardy. My biggest fear was that I was simply not going to enjoy it. Very glad to report, that yes, I still love this movie.
It’s extremely flawed, i think anybody who has seen this will agree, but it knows exactly what it is, and what it wants to do. It doesn’t try to be a movie it’s not, and for that, I can excuse the dated tropes, lack of some characterization, and sheer stupidity of it all. Bring It On is fun as hell and it’s unapologetic in sharing it’s fun.
It has a surprising amount of actually good social commentary that of course I did not pick up on as a child but now, it’s actually impressive for a movie like this to make social commentary like this at a time where it really was not all that common at all, especially in this genre.
Honestly, I don’t think this is a 5 star film, HOWEVER, my personal connection to it, combined with the fact that it surprisingly still holds up and the actually solid social commentary means I’m keeping my rating at 5 stars and I do not care what anyone else thinks.
Side note, I find it very very funny that Bring It On is the Kirsten Dunst movie I have watched this year with better social commentary than Civil War. Also Torrance ate with that boyfriend material line.