Product Details

• Actors: Marla Sokoloff, Marley Shelton, Melissa George, Mena Suvari, Rachel Blanchard
• Directors: Francine McDougall
• Producers: Greg Mooradian, Matt Moore
• Format: NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: New Line Cinema
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (78 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00003CXTI

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

"Their cheer blew like a bulimic after Christmas dinner," sneers Lisa (Marla Sokoloff from Dude, Where's My Car?), a bitter B-squad cheerleader who has it in for the A squad. She's come to the police to solve the mystery of a local bank robbery--a story that begins when head cheerleader Diane (Marley Shelton, Pleasantville, The Bachelor) and star quarterback Jack (James Marsden, X-Men, Disturbing Behavior) fell in love. Before you know it, Diane's knocked up--but she and Jack are delighted and decide to get married. Their parents disown them immediately, so the young couple ends up in a crappy apartment, working low-wage jobs. They're both so unrelentingly earnest and cheerful that they won't lose heart, but Diane soon realizes that their incomes won't support their impending twins. Then, one night as she and her squad (including Mena Suvari of American Beauty) are watching Point Break, they get the idea to rob a bank... Sugar & Spice, a broad satire of high school hierarchy, is set to a sparkling pop soundtrack and features many, many shots of cute cheerleaders in tight sweaters and short skirts. The cast is enthusiastic; Sokoloff in particular seems to savor her atypically nasty role. Also featuring cameos by Jerry Springer, Kurt Loder, and an almost unrecognizable Sean Young (Blade Runner, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective). --Bret Fetzer

From The New Yorker

The original title was "Sugar & Spice & Semiautomatics," but that was before Columbine. With the dark comedy of Mandy Nelson's screenplay toned down, the result is a teen movie that's an unappealing mix of the generic and the arch. Not that the premise wasn't promising: five pompom girls (of which Mena Suvari and Marley Shelton are two) rob a local bank branch so that one of them, who's pregnant, will be able to raise her twins in proper American comfort. The director, Francine McDougall, twirls the material around with a music-video slickness, but the movie still feels schizophrenic and, for all the nubile perkiness of its actresses, flat. -Michael Agger
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tarantino Laughs With The Varsity Pep Squad!, April 27, 2004

By 

Dean Anderson (New York, New York) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sugar & Spice (DVD)

Cheerleaders are an easy target. They're always happy, peppy and have high standards, both in their morals and in their men. Such is the case of the five women in "Sugar and Spice."

Everything is idyllic in their world... especially when the head cheerleader meets the transfer student quarterback! But after some extracurricular activity, there's a new student on the way. And after their parents collectively disown the kids for it, it's time to stop being polite and start getting a real job.

After suffering through minimum wage jobs while trying to continue to study, and dealing with a flophouse style home with a sketchy super and desperately needing to plan for their arriving bundle, the squad comes up with a plan: rob the bank where their pregnant partner is employed! And what a plan it is!

Complete with blond doll masks and star spangled outfits, the girls are set to pull their "Reservoir Dogs" routine. But can they get away with it?

As implausible as the plot is, it's equally engaging, as we follow the team attempting to plan out this perfect crime, in order to help their friend. It's got a lot of heart and charm!

Fans of the David E. Kelley TV series, "The Practice" will recognize Marla Sokoloff as the Cheer squad's main antagonist... but fans of J.J. Abrams TV series "Alias" might NOT recognize aussie actress Melissa George who here plays the squad member obsessed with Conan O'Brien!

The DVD has both the widescreen and the standard versions of the film, plus a couple of deleted scenes (which, quite frankly, were correctly left out of the final cut, but are interesting to see here). A talented and amusing cast, and a fun story... definitely recommended!

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good satire for the 20 something crowd, February 4, 2001

By 

Eric M. Veit "eveit" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
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I went to see this movie with a fellow college student, and we laughed throughout. Unfortunately, everyone else in the theatre was probably 13 years old, and the jokes sailed over thier heads. It is a biting high school satire that has quite a few funny points. If you loved Election, Heathers, or Drop Dead Gorgeous (which I did), Sugar and Spice is right up your alley.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cheerleaders as we might wish we could remember them, August 31, 2002

By 

faith star (slick rock, SC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sugar & Spice (DVD)

This movie has been called a very silly farce, and perhaps it is. But for some of us it might just be the perfect antidote to some of our sour high school memories of pompousness. If you went to a school with plenty of pompousness and one where cheerleaders are virtually worshipped as goddesses and as an utterly unattainable standard for the rest of us, here's a no-holds-barred deflation of all that. It is sometimes hilarious, and I think I must speak for quite a few viewers when I say it is a thoroughly refreshing de-bunking of those myths that still haunt some of our teen memories. The cheerleaders in this movie are a motley crew of girls -- there's a super-popular one, there's a "trampy" one whose mother is in prison, and there's a super-pious one, out to retain her virginity (at least supposedly so!). But this movie brings them all down to the same earthy level and says cheerleaders can be real doofuses to all the extent of the other doofuses you knew in high school. SUGAR AND SPICE can really give one a feeling that there's not much difference after all between those school icons you most envied or wanted to emulate and their unfortunate classmates who were the butts of the most cruel jokes. At least one other recent movie seemed to celebrate and exult cheerleading as if it were the most serious and important sport since kickboxing. I guess there's a legitimate audience for such things. Some do take cheerleading very seriously, and not all of them should be assumed as having any intent of putting the rest of us "in our place". So let them be entitled to their serious cheerleading movies. But for so many of the rest of us, I must suppose, such a movie only reinforced those old memories of social stratification in school, seeming to waste some promising young acting talent in the process. So, while cheerleaders might need their serious movies, so equally do many of the rest of us need the likes of SUGAR AND SPICE as a refreshing change of pace!