WE'RE BAAAAAAAAACK!
Our summer hiatus is over, and to compensate for the lack of f**kery, we bring you not one... not two... but THREE at once! Ever since that misguided weekend, four years ago, when I made Sarah watch the High School Musical trilogy and Camp Rock, I think I've had a subconscious mission to keep her informed on all the ways that the Disney Channel makes life terrible. So, last week, when I brought The Cheetah Girls 2 into her life, Sarah asked, "Are we doing this for 'Camp or Crap?'" Shamefully, that answer was originally "no," as I had recently let myself watch it for the first time in a few years and wanted to share my guilty pleasure. However, after discussing the presence of the entire trilogy, and notifying Sarah that the first was worse than the second (I hadn't seen
Directed By: Oz Scott (The Jeffersons, Fame the TV show), Kenny Ortega (Newsies, High School Musical trilogy), and Paul Hoen (Even Stevens, Sabrina the Teenage Witch)
Starring: Raven-Symone, Adrienne Bailon, Sabrina Bryan and Kiely Williams (Bailon and Williams were in 3LW when all this started)
Plot Summary: "This movie is trying really hard to be ethnic."
The Cheetah Girls begin as a singing quartet of freshmen whose main goal is to perform in their Manhattan high school's annual talent show. Because their school has lots of famous alumni, this talent show is the place to be discovered. The girls:
--Galleria (Raven-Symone): the bi-racial, type-A leader and songwriter, whose number-one focus is the success of the Cheetah Girls and reaching stardom. (Yes, their races are important, because they keep referring to them.)
--Chanel (Bailon): the fun-loving, Latina best friend who has abandonment issues with her mother's boyfriends
--Dorinda (Bryan): the dancer, a poor foster kid who doesn't know where she came from, but is presumably white and some other stuff
--Aquanetta, or Aqua (Williams): the brainy-yet-goofy black one who talks about being from Texas and putting hot sauce on food at every opportunity
As one would expect in a musical about struggling for fame in a group, Galleria becomes a problem when she gets a big head and acts like a raging bitch to everyone. (A near replica of that t-shirt moment in Almost Famous when Jason Lee says, "Oh, don't mind us, we're just the out-of-focus guys!" occurs after a promo picture of the Cheetah Girls appears.) She's super-unlikable at this point, but the movie flips when some skeezy record producer named Jackal comes in, and Galleria's suddenly the one with the best instincts for the group's well-being. There's dissent, and fighting, and Galleria quits the group. And then her dog falls in a hole and the Cheetahs rally together to sing him out of it. As anyone could guess, Galleria realizes how awful she's been, and everyone forgives each other, and then the above song occurs to finish the movie, complete with Galleria's irrelevant love interest playing an electric guitar that's not plugged into anything.
Now that Disney's done acknowledging that there are several cultures in the United States, the Cheetah Girls are moving on to Spain! Through a series of highly improbable events, the girls end up in Barcelona to compete in an international music competition before they begin their senior year of high school. Galleria, ever focused, works on the group's songs and tries to get everyone to rehearse, but the girls are distracted! Chanel is preoccupied with issues with her mom's Spanish boyfriend, Luc -- we're pretty sure he was French in the first movie, but I guess the producers needed a reason to go to Spain -- a perfectly nice man who has graciously welcomed everyone to stay in his beautiful mansion/villa. Dorinda gets wrapped up with a fellow dancer, Joaquin, who works for Luc and also happens to be a Count and can't act, and Aqua's suddenly into fashion design. All the while, the Cheetah Girls are being watched/stalked by a mysterious, gorgeous guitar player named Angel. (LIKE A GUARDIAN, GET IT? DO YOU GET WHY THE WRITERS NAMED HIM ANGEL?! DO YOU GET IT?!?!?!) Everyone is unfocused and Galleria quits again, but she comes back once the girls promise to keep it together. After a rival's scheming mom tries to break up the group and fails, the Cheetah Girls are stronger than ever and perform an outrageous bonanza for the competition. The movie ends without even mentioning who won, because I guess that's not supposed to be important after all the lessons everyone learned through their adventure or whatever.
At a certain point, somebody at the Disney Channel realized that in the course of this multicultural odyssey, they haven't covered India yet. So, in The Cheetah Girls: One World, the girls jet off to India to perform in a Bollywood movie. Raven's not in this one, probably because she was smart enough to say, "Okay, we've done what we can with this, and now I'm over it." Unfortunately, we're treated to a third movie without her, because 3LW isn't a thing anymore and Sabrina Bryan doesn't appear to have been involved in anything else. (Since, the three of them have decided to perform as the Cheetah Girls as a full-time gig. I accidentally saw them in concert once -- long story, I swear I didn't mean to -- and it was a hot-ass mess.)
The third one is full of nothing. Even fewer arcs than before, weird love set-ups (the most romantic one doesn't involve any of the three leads), a hell of a lot of extra characters, outfits that inexplicably got way worse than anything from the first movie... it's just useless. And Galleria's absence, explained by her being busy with preparations for Cambridge University (I like to think she's there with Angel, who sort of ended up being her love interest in Europe), leaves the group without an anchor. The movie's 75% music, due to lack of story, and we don't even remember there being a message for this one. Also, the Indian characters are somewhat slapstick, where the Spanish characters in the second movie had been cosmopolitan Europeans. In the age of Dora the Explorer, Spanish culture was embraced wholeheartedly, while even the Cheetah Girls' attitudes towards India seemed slightly more dismissive.
(Several) Observations Made As We Watched All Three Movies:
--"I can't remember all the names, so I'm just going to call them the names I made up for them: Gonorrhea, Aquafina and Dorito."
--"No, it is NOT 'Cheetahlicious!' That is not a word! SHUT THE F*** UP!"
--"Why would they all own the same ugly-ass jogging suit?"
--"That's not how you treat a dog! I am OFFENDED!"
--"Who am I supposed to like in this movie? 'Cause I don't like any of them."
--"Oh, Jesus, I smell a dance battle."
--"We're just pretending Galleria is dead, OK?" / "No, Galleria is not dead." / "...Yeah, I'm just pretending Galleria is dead."
--"Wow, they really didn't want to work on a story for this one."
--"HEY GUYS, DID ANY OF THESE THINGS WORK IN THE FIRST TWO MOVIES? NO? THEN WHY ARE WE DOING THEM NOW?"
--"That was rude, Dorito!"
--"This is strange and awful."
--"How did the acting get worse?"
--"'Dance me if you can?' You can't dance a person! Learn your verbs! 'DANCE ME' IS GIBBERISH, YOU DUMB BITCHES!"
--"Chanel, that top is too low-cut for the Disney Channel." / "Nah, Disney's had its cherry popped since Hannah Montana."
--"I don't want to sit through all the assumptions and jealousy in order to get to the 'Nothing will tear us apart!' resolution that is sure to occur. Like, this is ridic, and these outfits are just heinous and more heinous."
--"I have to take [Sarah's dog] Oskar out and decompress from what we just watched. BRB."
The Best Part: We found ourselves missing Angel to an obnoxious extent, considering that he's only got about 3 lines in the second movie, but because of his limited dialogue, that meant he never said anything stupid or cheesy. Which means we preferred him to any other guy who showed up. And although Sarah's not the biggest fan of Galleria, she certainly gave the group focus: Galleria united the other girls in their irritation when she was the villain, and then kept their eyes on the prize after she learned from her conceited missteps.
The Cheetah Girls 2 is the lesser of three evils; not surprising, given it's the only one with a director who specializes in musicals. It improved on the cheesy failures of the first movie, had better music and dance numbers, and integrated the Spanish language and environment in a way that didn't feel like the girls were just putting on costumes.
The Worst Part: The entire third movie is atrocious, but overall, the heavy-handed "Let's celebrate all the cultures we can!" thing is too much at times (as initially evidenced by most of the girls' off-the-wall names). It's a fantastic message, for sure, to embrace multiculturalism and international awareness, but there are moments when the movies are trying way too hard. On the other hand, the third movie's main love interest, the Bollywood director who becomes involved with Chanel, is the most Americanized of the Indian men. Disney's got a knack for this kind of backhanded diversity (please see our write-up for The Prince of Persia). Plus, we're not sure if this is a shrewd cultural observation or supremely offensive: Aqua accidentally runs into her crush, a tech guy she's never met and only knows through his over-the-phone assistance with her computer problems, in India, because of course, customer service is outsourced.
The Cheetah Girls = D+
The Cheetah Girls 2 = C
The Cheetah Girls: One World = F
Overall, that evens out to a D+ for the whole trilogy.
PS: This is Angel (Peter Vives).
(Posters and video clips © Walt Disney Company)
Ahhh! You're movie dialogue is the BEST
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