BRING IT ON: ALL OR NOTHING

I just realized that in my film reviews, I'm not being fair. I'm only reviewing films that I think are good. So I need to invoke the spirit of Fox News and bring a "fair and balanced" approach to reviewing movies.

Which brings me to BRING IT ON: ALL OR NOTHING, the third part of the cheerleading magnum opus trilogy. I must admit, the original BRING IT ON is a guilty pleasure, a well executed piece of pop confection that always holds my attention. I really really enjoy it. The DVD sits next to my copy of THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE on my bookshelf.

Then there was a second installment which nobody saw, and we are blessed with the third (and presumably final) installment. In fairness to the target audience, I shall now divulge the plot, in character:

So, like, there's this totally hot chick named Brittany who's all like perfect and stuff, like she's dating the high school quarterback and is the captain of her cheerleading squad. She kinda is a total bitch to some of the girls on her squad, but like, she's dedicated to being the best, so she sees it more as like, what do they call it? Destructive criticism?

Anyway so her dad has to like to move for his job and whatever, and Brittany has to transfer to this totally ghetto Crenshaw High School which is full of like, gang bangers and black people. Brittany tries to, like, join the cheerleading squad but the black and hispanic kids are totally mean to her, and they like call her "white girl" and are totally bitchy with her. But Brittany gets on the squad, and she's introduced to this totally new way of dancing that's done in the hood- I think they call it Krumping. And so,like....


OK I have to stop here because if I vomit on my computer then it will short circuit.

This movie was on ABC Family last night and I have to say it was the most racist film I'd seen since BIRTH OF A NATION. I shit you not. Every possible racial stereotype was played out to just below blatant levels, and it made me wonder why the filmmakers just didn't go the extra step. Why didn't they just have the Puerto Rican girl pull a razorblade out from under her tongue and punctuate every one of her lines with "mi vida loca" and "pendejo" and have all of her friends dressed up like cholos? And why not just have the white kids call the black kids niggers- they said every other term, including "gang bangers," "hood rats" and ghetto kids." An Asian girl, who by the way knows martial arts, is even referred to as "Crouching Tiger." Just go ahead and call her a chink with her "Ancient Chinese Secret."

There's even a scene where lead "actress" Hayden Panettiere (god will someone please stop giving this insufferable girl work), having been blessed with the humility of minority life, steps up to her former white friends and declares "You better watch yourself, white girl!" A white girl berating another white girl for being a white girl? What the hell is going on here? Having denounced her white-devil heritage and embraced the simple life of humble working minorities, Hayden then turns to her Latino boy crush and Krumps with him.

And that's just the racism bit. The film lovingly embraces and focuses on jailbait buttcheeks, midriffs and boobs, and features more crotch shots than a Jenna Jameson double feature. The clearly underage nymphets don't just suggest sex, they even have it, with the bitchy antagonist declaring in front of her entire high school that she too had sex with the high school quarterback, and goddammit he loved every minute of it. We all know it happens, but on ABC Family? Whose parent company is Disney?

And then there's the running gag about eating disorders. A girl who is skinny is constantly told that she is fat, and once she passes out she's happy to eat a Snickers bar. She realizes, in a moment of intellectual clarity, that "I come from a family of fat asses." I'm not joking with you, that's what she really says.

The movie tries to moralize its racist and prejudiced undertones as "don't judge a book by its cover" but it fails miserably because it doesn't make an example of them, it makes jokes out of them. Bad jokes. Tasteless jokes. Mean-spirited jokes.

If CRASH was a dissection of race relations in America, then BRING IT ON:ALL OR NOTHING is the cancerous tumor of racism in America that continues to grow and fester. The scriptwriters use the ideology of "I was only joking" to cover up their core belief that "stereotypes exist for a reason," which is absolutely reprehensible. It's like if I were to go to a random black man on the street here in Chicago and tell him "You look like a cotton-pickin' nigger," and then follow that with a pat on the back and telling him " I'm just joking with ya." I might say I'm joking, but the fact of the matter is that I still fucking said the joke, and I probably wouldn't have said it if I didn't believe in it, even fractionally.

Don Imus is rightfully getting his ass kicked for saying racist remarks about the Rutgers women's basketball team, and he's trying to defend himself saying it was just a joke. You don't call someone a "nappy head ho" and later tell them you're just joking. And people around this country are defending him using the rhetoric "it's ok for a black man to call a black woman a ho, why can't a white man do it?" Because the black man who calls a black woman a ho or another black man a nigger is as much of an ingrate as a white man who does it. Don't judge assholes against other assholes, judge them against standards of universal decency.

This movie is an utter abomination, a primitive piece of hate posing as compassionate conservatism, and a disgrace. And the fact that its being marketed to kids is a crime punishable by solitary for life. Shame on the people who make this crap.