Bring It On (2012)

 

I’ll admit that I can be somewhat snobbish when it comes to my media.  I’m all about Stephen Sondheim shows, Wong Kar-wai films, Tom Stoppard plays, and so on.  As such, “musical based on the franchise of cheerleading movies” isn’t something that would ordinarily make an appearance on my blog.  Bring It On, however, is awesome, so the haters can forget it.

 

The story is simple but well told.  Campbell, the newly-elected cheerleading captain at Truman High, finds out that she’s being redistricted out of her affluent, lily-white school.  She will instead be spending her senior year at Jackson, an inner-city school with metal detectors, a completely foreign social order, and no cheerleading squad.  She awkwardly tries to make friends in her new environment.  At the top of her list is Danielle, the passionate, proud leader of Jackson’s dance crew; Campbell hopes to tweak the crew into a squad that can hold its own in cheerleading competitions.

 

The characters, while a bit stock, are drawn affectionately; Truman’s cheerleaders are an entertaining mix of bitchy and ditzy, and the motley Jackson crowd is vibrant and loveable.  Earnest emotion and amusing one-liners jazz up the familiar beats of the story.  Plus, there are a number of good themes in the show – well-trod ideas about friendship, values vs. victory, and being true to oneself, but again, it’s done well and with heart.

 

It was the behind-the-scenes crew that put this musical on my radar.  The score is a collaboration between Tom Kitt (half of the team behind Next to Normal) and Lin-Manuel Miranda (who composed In the Heights, one of my favorite scores of the last ten years,) with some additional lyrics by Amanda Green, who I’m not familiar with but who does a fine job.  If you know either of the shows above, you probably realize, as I did, that you’re in for a smart, stylish score with a nice mix of pop-rock, hip-hop, and Broadway knowhow. 

 

Our composing team definitely delivers.  The songs are cool, catchy, and theatrical, with clever lyrics that are by turns funny, touching, and impressively-rhymed.  From “What I Was Born to Do,” the energetic I-want number that opens the show, the music explodes engagingly through the score.  I love the driving beats of the scene-song “Do Your Own Thing,” the playful attitude of “We Ain’t No Cheerleaders,” the message of the love-yourself anthem “It Ain’t No Thing,” and the pure ideals of the gorgeous “Cross the Line.”  It’s hard to pick favorite lyrics in a show with a lot of gems, but I’ll take a stab at it.  For serious lines, there’s Campbell’s lovely, contemplative, “High in the air, there is a moment just before you start to fall - / Live in that one moment.”  And for humorous lines, it’s hard to beat Twig’s wry, “What, are y’all scared? / Y’all think cheering is feminine? / Then I’m a feminist swimmin’-in / Women, gentlemen!”

 

Additionally, one of the girls at Jackson - La Cienega - has probably the tragedy-free plot of any trans character in history.  Is it true to the high school experience of most trans kids?  Maybe not, but it's heartening to see her happily loving who she is without being hated for it.  I'm just sayin'.

 

Warnings

 

A little swearing and some light sexual references.