Movie Review: 'Bring It On' (2000)

In essence, the plot of Bring It On is a demographic ploy — i.e., can the movie pull in young black viewers as well as white? Torrance and her crew may be going for their ''dream,'' but the movie, which is clever enough to tweak their shallow obsession with victory, could scarcely care less; it's really a celebration of their high-dis style of one-upmanship and heartless sexual bravado.

''This is not a democracy!'' declares Torrance. ''It's a cheerocracy!'' Few actresses besides Kirsten Dunst could deliver that line with a straight face and make it seem innocent in its very arrogance. After her lovely '70s daze in The Virgin Suicides, she gets to show some spunk here — maybe too much — but it's her mixture of delicacy and vivacity that holds the picture together. At once porny and campy, Bring It On takes its tone from evil-strumpet beauty-contest comedies like Drop Dead Gorgeous (which also starred Dunst), from the trendy fashionista lingo of Clueless, and from MTV, the channel that helped transform the hot-bod exhibitionism of spring break into a year-round state of mind. In the new teen world, everyone is a walking pinup. There are a few boys on the cheerleader team, and they endure their share of ''fag'' jokes (which the movie at once winks at and revels in), but since their main purpose is to serve as human pedestals, hoisting the heroines in the air, they're just decorative beefcake. This is strictly a girls-rule fantasy.

I do wish the movie made flashier use of its pop soundtrack. The closing credits, which blend blooper outtakes with scenes of the actresses lip-synching to B*witched's remake of Toni Basil's ''Mickey,'' has a bump-and-grind exhilaration that nothing preceding it can match. That said, Bring It On, a late-August throwaway pitched between exploitation and satire, has more life to it than such recent teen duds as Boys and Girls, Whatever It Takes, or the limp, cringe-worthy Loser. Those movies, in their way, were sincere; this one is proudly crass. That makes it, at the very least, of the moment. B-