The Cheerleaders/Review

From The Grindhouse Cinema Database

< The Cheerleaders
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In 411 BCE, the Greek playwrite Aristophanes premiered his sex comedy Lysistrata. In that play, the Greek city states are embroiled in the Peloponnesian War and the eponymous Lysistrata has a clever solution to get out: she convinces the women of those warring cities to withhold sexual favors from their partners. This will, she believes, properly motivate the men to negotiate a peace treaty. The strategy works but inflames the tensions between the sexes.

It was nearly an ideal solution.

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So, what if instead of withholding sex, the women had so much sex that the men would be too exhausted to fight? Enter Paul Glickler's The Cheerleaders. These eponymous characters do just that so their school's football team has a fighting chance.

The ideal solution, it seems, has been found.

Before that big game, though, the cheerleader squad has an opening which needs to be filled, having lost one member because her boyfriend didn't cover his. And Jeannie, a virgin with a boyfriend uninterested in sex, is a perfect fit: She's cute and unlikely to become pregnant before the season ends.

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The only problem is that she doesn't want to be a virgin.

For some reason, the cheerleaders think they need help finding someone who would be willing to have sex with Jeannie, so they reach out to a local hustler, Jon, for help. He's played by Richard Meatwhistle and I really, really hope that's his real name.

True, a cute cheerleader having a hard time finding a horizontal partner is hard to believe, but it does give the movie a plot, which elevates it above similar movies. But then again, maybe it is believable. One of the original financiers of the movie thought people wouldn't respond to the movie because he couldn't imagine anyone would lust after high school cheerleaders since they weren't adults.

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He's who I think about when I remind myself I'm not yet completely out of touch with the world.

Jon and the cheerleaders try to help Jeannie with her virginity problem. Their attempts occupy most of the movie's runtime and include a Scooby-Doo-style chase with a bear costume, some half-naked greasers interrupting a garden tea party, and bringing the entire football team to Jeannie's slumber party.

That last event tires out their own football team, so the indefatigable cheerleaders track down the opposing team to tire them out in order to level the playing field.

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Lysistrata would have been proud.

If I could point to one weakness, it's the one already mentioned: it's rather impossible to believe a girl as cute as Jeannie couldn't convince her boyfriend to take their relationship to a physical level. Believability aside, it does make for some funny scenes, so it's hard to hold it against the film. The Cheerleaders isn't the first movie to prioritize comedy over believability.

Ultimately, the movie works because it's just so much fun. It's silly, light-hearted, and never takes itself too seriously. The situations are goofy and the dialogue has enough wit to keep us interested even when the characters are clothed. And it should be mentioned that the characters spend a lot of time out of their clothes. This movie is made of T&A, and is a perfect fit for that nudie-cutie shaped hole in your life.

Sure, it's not Aristophanes, but his plays never featured smokin' hot cheerleaders with boundless energy, so maybe it's a tie game.


Rob McGee has written comedy and short stories for The American Bystander, Sammiches and Psych Meds, and a number of other funny places online and off. You can follow him on YouTube.

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