Lame/cool month continues at The Best Of Everything, explaining how The Coolness Continuum works by describing The Best Things that are so lame they're cool.Things like "Bring It On," The Best Teen Movie That's So Lame It's Cool.
Technically, I did not ever have to admit that I watched "Bring It On" at all. You would have never known. Outside of my family, nobody would ever have known.
Or, if word did get out that I watched "Bring It On," I could have simply said, Hey, I have two daughters and they made me watch it. And then dropped the subject.
I certainly did not have to admit that I liked "Bring It On." I did not have to decide to put on The World's Most Popular Website...
... that's this website, remember.
that I liked "Bring It On." But I've got the street cred to pull this off, I think. I'm man enough to say that I watched "Bring It On" and that I liked it and that, in fact, it's a cool movie despite being so phenomenally lame that it risked being a black hole of lameness, sucking everything into its maw and not letting anything out again.
"Bring It On," as if you don't know already, is about a group of cheerleaders at a high school who routinely win the national cheer championships (which I'm pretty sure actually exist). The year that they are to be led by new head-cheerleader Kirsten Dunst (played by Kirsten Dunst), they also learn that their previous leader, an ugly redheaded girl (played by an ugly redheaded girl) stole all their routines from a group of inner city cheerleaders, who -- surprise! -- are also going to compete in the national championships.
"Bring It On" had all the hallmarks of a lame movie.
Was it a teen movie done after the 1980s? Check. Everyone knows that teen movies sucked after the 1980s once John Cusack got too old to play even a college student, and once everyone woke up from their Hypnotoad-induced trance and said "Molly Ringwald? What were we thinking?"
Were there underdeveloped characters that seemed sort of tacked on? Check. Dad-with-busy-job-who-has-money-but-is-not-sure-what-daughter-does was there. So was bratty-younger-brother, cheating-boyfriend-who-might-be-gay and goth-girl-who-isn't-really. The movie, in fact, is chock full of all the characters that made up the backgrounds of all teen movies that came before it, with the possible exception of kid-whose-dad-wants-him-to-be-an-athelete-but-he's-smart.
Were the characters' names super-lame? Check. Torrance. Missy. Isis. Lava. Jenelope. They also had a character known as "Pervy Earth Sciences Teacher."
Did it feature rich kids vs. poor kids? Check. "Bring It On" in fact featured rich kids vs. poor kids, and rich kids vs., apparently, richer kids, since there were clear class divisions on the rich kids' team.
Did it have a scene in which a girl or girls danced to cheer themselves up? Check. That is the hallmark of a lame movie, going all the way back to "Stepmom," at least, which, if it didn't have a scene in which the characters cheered themselves up by dancing or singing, at least seemed like it should have four or five of them.
But that last one, the cheer-me-up-by-dancing scene, was also where the movie became cool. The scene involves Kirsten Dunst being down about something (frankly, I forget what, but it was probably being down about [SPOILER ALERT THAT HAS TO DO WITH CHEERLEADING CAMP] dropping the "Spirit Stick." She pops in a tape or cd or something and listens to a song by a guy who [SPOILER ALERT ABOUT BOYFRIENDS] likes her but she doesn't realize he likes her and she [ALSO A SPOILER ALERT ABOUT BOYFRIENDS BUT THIS REALLY IS A SPOILER SO DON'T READ IT IF YOU'RE GOING TO SEE THE MOVIE] has a boyfriend who's off at college who she doesn't know is cheating on her, but she begins to listen to this song, which is called "You're Just What I Need" and bounces around the room and gets her joie d'vivre back.
And that scene, as dumb and lame as it could be, works for two reasons. First, the song is really cool and is exactly the kind of song that would make you want to get up and jump around. And second, Kirsten Dunst does a good job of looking like someone who listened to the song and got the urge to jump around.
I can't find a cut of that scene itself, but here's the song being danced to by some cheerleaders, so it's pretty close to what you'd expect.
Sometimes it's that easy; sometimes coolness comes from one simple point that's easy to identify, and it happened with "Bring It On." That song was where the movie turned for me -- I liked the song and I got swept up in the emotion of it, and that made the difference, and I began enjoying not just that part but the parts that had gone before and the parts that came after it, from [LOOK, IT'S ALL PRETTY MUCH SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT. GO WATCH THE MOVIE AND THEN COME BACK AND READ THIS]the efforts to create new cheer routines to the hiring of a fake coach to the ultimate competition at the end, in which Kirsten's team...
Nope. I won't wreck it for you. Go watch the movie. It's one of maybe two teen movies made since 1989 that actually doesn't suck, and by all rights, it should suck. But it doesn't; thanks to that song, and that moment, it makes the trip around The Coolness Continuum and becomes cool all over again.
Other lame/cool things include Charleston Chews, Longitude, Swing Music, and The Atom.
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