Bring It On 4
Fourth Installment of Cheerleading Franchise Out on DVD
Bring It On 4: In It to
Win It
Rated PG-13 for profanity, crude humor and suggestive content.
Running time: 90 minutes
Studio: Universal Studios Home Entertainment
DVD Extras: Deleted scenes, ’The Making of’ and a few additional
featurettes.
DVD Review by Kam
Williams
Poor (0 stars)
Seven years ago, Bring It On was the sleeper hit of the summer which
kickstarted the careers of a couple of relatively-unknown actresses,
Gabrielle Union and Kirsten Dunst. The
pair squared-off as the captains their high school cheerleading teams,
one, all-black and hailing from the ’hood, the other, lily-white and
located in the suburbs.
The film worked by creating a palpable tension between credible
characters caught up in a realistic across the tracks drama. And
although neither Union nor Dunst would reprise her role, the original
was parlayed into a franchise which is presently releasing its third
sequel on DVD.
Sadly, this installment is a pathetic rip-off which bears virtually no
resemblance to the first, except that it revolves around cheerleading.
It actually might have been better titled West Side Story 2, since the
two squads have been renamed the Jets and the Sharks, and a boy from the
former falls in love with a girl from the latter.
Strangely, despite the fact that during Bring It On 2 the kids
entered college, they are somehow back in high school again, here. More
curiously, the lead black character has been reduced to a
one-dimensional, support role as a stereotypical sassy sister leveling
threats like: ’I will slice you like government cheese.’
Worse, she boasts about participating in drive-by shootings since she
was a child. Then, worst of all, during the denouement, she reveals that
she’s ’been ’hood ratting it up ’because she’s really an Oreo, black on
the outside, but white on the inside.’
At this juncture, she is offered a shoulder to lean on by her
suddenly-sympathetic, patronizing blonde adversary, who advises: ’If you
want respect that badly, just be a bitch.’ I’m not even sure exactly
what that exchange is supposed to mean.
The real question is how long will African-American females continue to
be portrayed by Hollywood in such an offensive, demeaning, bizarre and
degenerate fashion?
Related Links
Blacktrospective 2007 Annual Look Back at the Best (and Worst) in Black
Cinema
http://aalbc.com/reviews/blacktrospective_2007.htm