So I don’t know how I didn’t hear that they’d made a Bring it On musical until a few weeks ago. Especially considering that the creative team includes Tom Kitt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Jeff Whitty. I did my research, and it made me slightly bummed, actually. I’m still kind of excited about the creative team and the guilty pleasure it may turn out to be (or the disaster it could be, either way) but the plot is different.
It’s not a musical version of 2000′s Bring it On, my second-favorite movie from when I was eleven. It’s just… another story about competing cheerleading squads, like the dozens of Bring it On sequels (okay, four) that have been produced over the last decade. Each of them just gets worse and worse. The great thing about the original is that it sort of knew it was ridiculous, or at least I hope it did: the sequels were ridiculous, but much less tongue-in-cheek. (Or at least the one I saw was; I haven’t subjected myself to the others.) Also, everyone in the original was really sarcastic at times, none more so than my babygirl Missy (Eliza Dushku). Missy was my hero back in the day, man. I actually kind of wanted to be a cheerleader for like… three months once, mostly so I could be sarcastic like her while doing it.
(I’m sure I’ve also mentioned my now-times amusement at imagining the crack that would be Faith and Glory [Clare Kramer] on a cheerleading squad together. Yep.)
More importantly, though, Bring it On: The Musical got me thinking. What about stage musical versions of other movies I loved when I was in junior high? Well, Rocky Horror and Chicago are already stage shows, and Moulin Rouge is already a musical, though for copyright reasons it couldn’t play on stage the same way. Legally Blonde got made a few years ago (and is… well, the same plot, but even more ridiculous. I can safely say I still have a guilty fondness for Bring it On [and that is not just because of Eliza nope what are you saying] but Legally Blonde is mildly painful.) But what about the others?
Well, Miss Congeniality could work. Not the godawful sequel, of course. But beauty pageant musicals… actually, if someone’s doing a beauty pageant musical, do Drop Dead Gorgeous. (Apparently someone did, but it’s a drag show, which doesn’t quite count. I’m talking ubersarcastic young women being self-parodying. Phoebe Strole anywhere. I don’t care that she’s 28. She could still do it for the stage.)
Charlie’s Angels… again, not the sequel. Though I doubt it would work as a musical at all. It’s too reliant on action. (Don’t judge the tastes of eleven year old me. I beg of you. I’m judging them hard enough myself.)
X-Men. (Kind of the combo breaker in the my-junior-high-tastes category, I know, but bear with me.) I really doubt you could do it correctly, at least off the movie (the first two please), and the comic purists would probably flip out if they tried to do it off of a comic arc, none of which I know anything about. So I can’t discuss that. (First Class might be fun, but that’s a recent film, so not relevant to this discussion.)
…geez, what else did I watch when I was in junior high? I saw all the usual things at least once, Save the Last Dance and… uhm, other things. I really don’t remember. I’ve mentioned the most important ones.
Well, I think the moral of this story is: I will pay money to see it when/if Bring it On: The Musical is in reasonable driving distance of me, for the sake of my eleven year old self. (Maybe it’s better it’s not off the film. I can’t imagine a reasonable substitute for Eliza, really.)
–your fangirl heroine.
