Sugar & Spice (2001)

the audience applauded

Simply A Masterpiece

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

I love this movie and watch it every few months. The casting is perfect - Mena Suvari as Kansas and James Marsden as Jack are the standouts among an exceptional cast. This film is cheesy in the greatest way. I mean, it's about a high school cheerleading squad robbing a bank to fund the cheer captain's pregnancy! The characters are really well developed and are the driving force. They all have little aspects of them that make them unique and hilarious - I find Cleo's obsession with Conan O'Brien to be particularly funny. The film is narrated by a very snarky and obviously jealous "B Squad" (junior varsity) cheerleader. They do a good job of juxtaposing what she says with what is actually happening, but the lines blur a little as you get farther into the story and you start to wonder what to believe. It truly does have surprising little twists and turns, but nothing overwhelming. This is a great movie to just relax and watch with your friends or in a bubble bath or something. Witty, memorable, and ultimately a story of the power of female friendship and a satire of high school politics and stereotypes.

Diane 'Mastermind' Weston (Marley Shelton) is the leader of the Lincoln High School cheerleaders with Hannah 'religious virgin' Wald (Rachel Blanchard), Cleo 'Conan O'Brien stalker' Miller (Melissa George), Kansas 'Rebel' Hill (Mena Suvari) and Lucy 'Brain' Whitman (Sara Marsh). They are arrested and the jealous leader of the B-squad Lisa Janusch (Marla Sokoloff) is ratting out the girls to the police. Jack Bartlett (James Marsden) is the popular school football jock who gets Diane pregnant. They get their own apartment but she is stressed out about money. After watching 'Point Break', Diane has an unlikely idea. To get a gun, they have to include the criminal's daughter Fern Rogers (Alexandra Holden) in the squad.The movie is deliberately quirky. The problem is that the main cheerleaders are not that funny. They aren't comedians and fail to deliver the humor properly. Some of it works. The funniest potential is actually Sokoloff. She could be the overly paranoid, jealous and ambitious lead like Tracy Flick in 'Election'. This movie has a great idea on the surface but fails to deliver the laughs.

Coming into Sugar and Spice, I have to admit I wasn't exactly expecting much- if anything. I was guilty of wanting to see it (hey any movie about cheerleaders that go on a crime spree has my vote of wanting to see it), but mostly because it seemed like it would be nevertheless enjoyable. Well, when sitting down to watch it I won't lie in saying that expecting it to JUST be enjoyable wasn't enough for me. I wanted to have the mind to like it (I love dark comedies, and especially ones they aren't afraid to poke fun at themselves), and you know what? I loved this movie.I will say the moment "Sugar and Spice" opened I leaned back in my seat, preparing myself to be disappointed. The movie has a very simple (yet perhaps appropriate) opening, and they immediately were jumping into story. Usually I don't fly with that, and even in this movie case I didn't immediately. Then when they started to crank up the cheer leading routines I thought: "Great, they have this great premise, but they're going to focus more on the cheer leading than the plot." Thankfully- they didn't. What made it start to click for me was the realization that all the characters were going to stay in character. I'm so glad they didn't do the typical cheerleader mean girl, but instead did poke fun at the dim witted head cheerleader (and football star), but keep them on that level where they don't become annoying, too over-the-top, but instead make them likable. This film was hilarious, and you love these girls so much that you want to see them prevail in their life of crime. You feel sympathy for these girls (in particular Marley Shelton's lead character, whom you want to see achieve the all American dream), and they're enjoyable to watch as they are to laugh with.Sure this movie has it's cutesy, almost implausible moments. Plus like I said this movie opened (and perhaps ended) very simple, and for that I wish this movie has been slightly longer. I'll admit that they sort of milked this story as far as it would go without starting to become annoying or TOO over-the-top where it becomes annoying, tiresome, or even embarrassing. The film is very funny, extremely enjoyable, and is a very dark treat.

When I saw the IMDb mark for this movie, I said... oh boy is this going to be be a piece of cr@p. But from the first 5 minutes I *FELT* that it's not like that. So I stayed with it. It actually turned out that it wasn't a normal teen movie, but a really funny one! Not even classifiable as teen perhaps, since it doesn't really have any of that stupid "teen" sh1t. The performances were pretty good, I can't complain. And the plot is cool and unexpected. There are very few commedies that I like, but this one was really nice. I think a lot of people saw a few parts of it and then quit watching it and dismissed some low grade. I gave it a 9 out of 10 and I think if somebody watches it from start to finish, it can give AT LEAST a 6 no matter how hard he/she judges this.