Union Brings Spirit To 'Bring It On'
PLUS: Reviews of 'Sweet November,' 'Down To Earth' And 'School's Out'
It's got a great cast and has some truly inspired comic moments, but perhaps the biggest reason that the high-spirited sports comedy, "Bring It On" works is that it doesn't fall back on any overused teen-comedy formulas. It deserves at least three cheers.
New on video and DVD, the film tells the story of Torrance (Kirsten Dunst), a newly anointed captain of a perennial national championship cheerleading squad. But her bubbly personality is quickly deflated when she discovers the old captain stole routines from the Clovers, an inner-city squad led by the smooth and confident Iris (Gabrielle Union).
The title, "Bring it On," of course, refers to Torrance and Iris' challenge to each other to bring forward their best, and the tension works wonderfully on screen. Fortunately, both were able to let go with the greatest of ease.
"In the movie we're in each others faces all the time, but when he (director Peyton Reed) yelled 'Cut,' we were laughing, joking and hanging out," Union (TV's "City Of Angels") told me in a recent interview. "Once the next shot was set up we were back to 'grrr.'"
Of course, while the purpose of the film is to have fun, "Bring It On" has a lot more to offer than meets the eye. It's not a dance flick created to show off flashy shots and quick edits, but rather a story with real character dilemmas. The look at the sport ? that's right, the sport ? of cheerleading is far from superficial, and it's evident in the film that participating in it is serious business.
When I think of athletes, I think of basketball, baseball and football ? cheerleading never really entered into my definition of what an athlete was," Union said. "But after doing the movie, I realized I worked harder training for that movie than I did all of the years I played basketball and soccer in high school. The amount of physical and mental stress your body is under is pretty intense."
In addition to the physicality of the sport, "Bring It On" also addresses an important issue with a vital subplot in the film ? equal opportunity. She said it's a side of the sport that is very rarely looked at.
"It's one of the most expensive sports to participate in," Union said. "You have to pay for coaching, uniforms and travel to competition. It was one of the things we wanted to touch upon in the movie ? under normal circumstances, you need to have the means to get to the end, which is the national championship. So if you go to a poor school that doesn't get a lot of tax dollars and your parents don't have a lot of money to kick in for extra curriculars, you're not going to make it.
While Union was only a cheerleader in real life for one year (eighth grade), it was her experience of seeing that lack of opportunity that moved her to join the squad, in a sense, for "Bring It On."
"I remember going to basketball camp, and cheerleading camp was going on at the same time," recalled Union. "During our breaks, we'd watch the cheerleaders and secretly be pulling not for our own squad from our high school, but for the inner-city schools. It was funny though, that they would never make it past the first or second elimination rounds, and it wasn't until I did the movie that I started to understand that if you don't have the money for the right coaches, training or anything else, you're not going to make it.
"So when the script came along, I read it and the role of Iris was so strong," Union described. "She's from the inner city, but she's not a finger-snapping and head-swiveling girl. They allowed me to help create a character that is layered and has dimensions. In Hollywood, we usually fall for what I call the 'okey-doke' -- where it's a lot easier to play with the stereotype than it is against it. Fortunately for this movie we were allowed to play against it. I got so many 'thank yous' from young girls for showing another side."
Bringing On More Roles
Of course, now that Union has had the wonderful opportunity to play a layered character, it raises the bar for other scripts that come along. Fortunately, she's secure for at least the next two projects.
"I've been very lucky, the same man (Gary Hardwick) who helped re-write some of the Clovers material for 'Bring it On' also wrote a really great script for my next film, 'The Brothers,'" Union said. "He again allowed me creative license to help shape my character. It's great that I didn't have to wait too long for something else to come along where I got to be a little bit more free in how I was able to depict a strong African-American female."
Due in theaters in March, Union describes "The Brothers" as a "male version of 'Waiting to Exhale'," starring Bill Bellamy, D.L. Hughley, Shemar Moore and Morris Chesnut. "Since Hardwick was smart enough to hire some pretty dynamic women opposite these great guys, I think it became a well-rounded love story rather than just a story told from the male perspective."
In addition, Union just wrapped filming on the romantic comedy, "How to Make a Man Behave in 10 Days or Less."
"It's a great title, but kind of unrealistic," Union said, laughing.
In that movie, she's plays a spoiler opposite Vivica A. Fox. "She sees herself as ambitious and goal-oriented," Union said of her character. "And the goal happens to be somebody else's man."
If your idea of true romance is cartwheels along the beach and waves crashing while Enya music swells, then you're in luck. But if said scenario makes the bile rise into your throat, leave 'Sweet November' off your calendar.
Reeves plays Nelson Moss, an arrogant, egotistical advertising executive living in an ultra-modern but sterile apartment in downtown San Francisco. Theron is Sara Deever, a happy-go-lucky, slightly eccentric peacenik, who apparently must wear at least one crocheted item wherever she goes.
The two meet one afternoon at the Department of Motor Vehicles, and Deever decides that the cocky ad-man will be her next 'project'. As a way of dealing with her inner torment, Deever's on a Jerk-A-Month plan. She picks a misguided fellow and invites him to live at her hippie apartment for a month, in the hope that he'll emerge 'cured', with a new lease on life. The message here is that life is beautiful, don't waste a second of it, and enjoy the little things, yada-yada-yada.
A remake of the 1969 film starring Sandy Dennis and Theodore Bikel, 'Sweet November' is a painful, bleak mess to watch, offering nothing in the way of charm or originality.
Reeves is as wooden as ever, the ability to play a romantic leading man still eluding him. He just can't seem to deliver the emotional goods a role like this requires, and the idea that his character would fall in love with Theron's is too ridiculous to imagine. His declarations of love are delivered with less passion than his advertising proposal speech from earlier in the film.
Meanwhile Theron, reunited with Reeves after 1997's "The Devil's Advocate," has two faces in this film, that of the spunky lover of life and that of the anguished woman. But the transformation is so dramatic it's as if we're seeing two completely different characters. When her secret is revealed, all bubbliness fizzles away.
The dialogue is atrocious, the romantic devices cheesy, and the character portraits completely two-dimensional. It was hard not to laugh at all the hippie-chick stereotypes employed in creating Deever's character: she's vegan, dresses in flowing flowery skirts and clunky boots, has anti-fur posters and cute animal calendars hanging in her house, is friends with everyone she meets, and breaks into animal testing labs to free God's creatures.
It's a disappointing effort from director Pat O'Connor, who directed the truly sweet "Circle Of Friends" (1995). So, in the spirit of the film and its message to live each day to the fullest, save yourself one-and-a-half hours of drivel and go do cartwheels on a beach or something.--Suzanne Ellis
'Down To Earth' (PG-13)
a) Kill his contract, and find a funnyman more palatable to modern audiences? Or,
Caught between a moss-covered Chris Rock and a hard place, the studios chose the latter -- dredging up 'Heaven Can Wait' and spewing out the roundly mediocre remake, "Down To Earth," as a vehicle for the comedian.
There are two big reasons it doesn't succeed: Rock's once-cutting-edge racial humor really is starting to sound vaguely vaudevillian, and "Heaven Can Wait" really didn't warrant another kick at the film canister.
"Down To Earth" almost precisely mirrors the original, starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, with Rock as an aspiring amateur comic replacing Beatty's football-playing reincarnated jock. Rock is accidentally lifted off to heaven by the hugely unlikely angelic duo of Eugene Levy (the schmuck Angel) and Chazz Palminteri (the good-angel-fella), who give him a new lease on life in a rich white guy's body.
The premise of a trash-talkin', hip-hop-lovin' Chris Rock embedded in a fat old WASP guy seems to have lots of comic potential, but the safety-padded script doesn't allow much time to explore it. Rock, known for his rile-'em-up style in his standup comedy, is shockingly pallid at the hands of directors Paul and Chris Weitz -- who are also responsible for writing "Nutty Professor II" (let that be a warning).
The few comic payoffs along the way -- maybe four or five minutes of good banter -- comes as too little, too late. And like any guy who really ought to stick to onstage one-liners, Rock seems not so much to be acting as waiting for the other characters to shut up so he can deliver his next zinger. Unfortunately, the audience can also wait, and wait, for those zingers to come along ... and they are forced to wait a very long time. -- Joseph Ruttle
'Recess: School's Out' (G)
Just listen to a group of kids who want to become professional wrestlers, sitting around a campfire and singing their eerily violent version of "Kum Ba Yah." And here's Ms. Finster, the hag who tries to keep order on the playground of the Third Street School, as she observes some of her young charges making mischief: "I wonder if I can get them tried as adults."
Yes, a grownup viewer has to put up with an outrageously loopy plot, and implausibilities like kids stopping adult guards by pelting them with water balloons or squirting them with ketchup and mustard. And at times, the 84-minute movie feels long. But this show will appeal to kids and the grownups who sit with them.
Like the television show, the animated movie focuses on a group of fourth-graders and the long-suffering adults in their school. We see old friends like the mischievious pupil T.J. Detweiler (voiced by Andy Lawrence), the exasperated Principal Prickly (voiced by Dabney Coleman) and of course Ms. Finster (with the voice of April Winchell).
It's summer vacation, and T.J. finds his buddies clearing out of town to go to camp. So he's all alone when he discovers a science-fiction-style plot at the school to do away with summer vacation by getting rid of summer itself.
He rounds up the gang and his older sister (voiced by Melissa Joan Hart) to fight the bad guys. He even forms an unlikely alliance with Principal Prickly, whom he discovers is not such a bad guy after all, especially when it comes to the importance of lazy summer vacation days.
The movie includes a visual treat near the beginning ? a computer-animated trip that lets the audience descend from the sky, circle the neighborhood and then swoop across the playground to glide into a group of kids.
Any movie with a scene like that makes a bold promise that it will be fun to watch. And this one delivers. ?Associated Press
Catch up with Tim Lammers on these recent @ The Movies interviews:
New In Theaters
'Sweet November' (PG-13)
"Sweet November," a romantic drama starring Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron, is sickeningly sweet. No, wait, it's just sickening.
So here's the deal: You're confronted with a fading comic star in need of a career boost. What do you do?
b) Kill him off in a recycled movie vehicle, then make it so lame it kills his chances of doing another one anytime soon?
The television cartoon series "Disney's Recess'' is actually clever enough for grown-ups to enjoy. Now "Recess: School's Out" brings that tradition to the big screen, and fans of all ages will not be disappointed.
