Hear us out: Bride Wars

This afternoon we conducted a scientific and social experiment: can the criteria for a teen competition movie be applied to a movie where two grown ass women compete. We learned a lot, but mostly we learned that Bride Wars is the worst movie ever written. I would rather fall asleep in the movie theater seeing Bicentennial Man on my first date than ever watch Bride Wars again.

As for Erin, she finds it a blisteringly honest portrayal of woman. She related in some way to all of the characters, from the shrew to the pill-popping Asian to the perfectionist with an obvious eye lift to the token "drown my sorrows in Ben & Jerry's" girl to the schlubby receptionist with a biting wit.


So I know this is totally supposed to be about two straight women getting married, but let's talk about the elephant in the room. This movie is actually about two women who are so gay for each other. So goddamn gay. Gayer than The Incredible Adventures of Two Girls In Love. Emma wears the pants from the very first scene where the two girls stage a mock wedding, and shit never quits. She even (spoiler alert) dumps her dude and walks Liv down the aisle, you guys. Now that that's out of the way, let's get down to the nitty gritty.

Criteria:

• 10 points for the rough class warfare between the middle upper class Liv and the lower upper class Emma. 0 points for racial tension because, apart from the pill-popping Azn, everyone was white as snow (or a blood orange).
• 10 points for a mid-movie tearful (not on our part) setback
• 10 points for the gayest "training" montage we've seen yet
• 10 points for a message of lesbian compromise right at the very end. Also known as "playing for the other teamwork"
• 10 points for a national-level prize in the veiled promise of a Baby Wars sequel

Bonus Points:

• 0 points for me wishing there had been krumping, although I wasn't willing to rule it out until the very end
  
• 1 point for the whole thing being a skill brawl of who could be the biggest wedding-destroying bitch
• 1 point for an asshole fiance who (spoiler alert) got dumped
• 1 point for a knock down, drag out, tulle destroying pseudo-tiebreaker
• The average white boy fiances earn a solid, pasty four points
• No bonus points because we turned it off right before the credits and don't actually know if they were funny but let's just assume they weren't because the rest of the movie wasn't.

Final score: 57 points

In conclusion, this movie is BLUE!!! THIS MOVIE IS BLUE!! BLUE!!!!

Google bomb us please

SEE YOU AT NATIONALS, BITCH: Your #3 MSN resource for "God the asshole."

You're welcome.

Roll Bounce

Actual conversation from 4/18/2009
Blockbuster employee: Why Roll Bounce?
Alicia: Why NOT Roll Bounce?
Erin: Yeah it was very critically acclaimed.
Alicia: what

And then a lot of arguing back and forth consisting of Erin saying it was and Alicia saying it wasn't, devolving further into personal insults and name calling. But anyway, if you count the Portland Oregonian saying it was a "powerfully silly brain vacation," then yes, it was critically acclaimed.

But it's so much more than a powerfully silly brain vacation! Yeah, it's funny at times but dude, it's rollerskating. Skilled rollerskating. ROLL DANCING. And it has a killer ass soundtrack. Say what you will about it being fluff, but we might have teared up at a very emotional father-son argument. Don't even get us started on that tiebreaker, too. Fuck that tiebreaker. It's not fair to all the other tiebreakers in teen competition movies because that tiebreaker was fucking out of this world.

What Roll Bounce really has that no other movie will ever have is Sweetness. (Side note: I was just looking for an appropriate picture of Sweetness and was disappointed that the only ones I found didn't showcase his abs and pecs. Erin's response? "You can't even see his big blackness!")


Criteria:

• 10 points for the racial tension between the cracker ass Sweetness skaters and "The Cosbys" and the class warfare between Sweetness himself and the "ghetto" Bow Wow.
• 10 points for the forgettable and predictable love connection between Bow Wow and Meagan Goode.
• 10 points for an unseen dead mother whose skates he inherited and who had an ~invisible hand in the emotional mid-movie setback.
• Leading us to another 10 points for a mid-movie setback and I'm not going to tell you what it is so you can't prepare yourself. If we had to be caught off guard and brought to tears by it, then so do you.
• 10 points for several AWESOME training montages. I'm sorry but everything is better on roller skates. Everything. Even sex.
• 10 points for a national-level prize in that all of America got to see Sweetness' abs. Seriously those muscles of his could cure world hunger and end terrorism in America.

Bonus Points:

• 1 point for all of the white people in this movie being assholes
• 1 point for SUCH a skill brawl
• 1 point for a father who eventually comes around in the end
• 1 point for that same father falling from grace so hard
• 1 point for an out of this world tiebreaker, complete with 500% more abs than any other tiebreaker ever
• 7 points for Meagan Goode being super hot (as we've mentioned before), but minus one point because she also looks kind of like jail bait in this movie
• 5 points for an awesome credit sequence

FINAL SCORE: 76 (but it deserves so much more)

Nota Bene: Thank you Roll Bounce for teaching us all that this kid from Holes


grew up to be surprisingly attractive.

BREAKING NEWS!

PHOEBE HAS READ AND APPROVED OUR REVIEW.

I now present to you, dear reader, Phoebe Unfiltered:

When I was 14, Center Stage was the utter apogee of cinema in my eyes. I was in love with more than one of the characters, I felt it described life completely accurately, and I just couldn't get enough of all that Jamiroquai.

Here in 2009, my dear, dear friends Alicia and Erin have become obsessed with teen competition movies (I mean who can blame them?) and have set up a blog to review ALL OF THEM EVER. Their criteria is incredibly specific and scientifically calculated... really, it's Siskel and Ebert level stuff.

To humor me, we all watched Center Stage about two weeks ago. I was supposed to be a guest reviewer for the blog, but I applied my procrastination skills in this situation as well. But, I'm quite glad I did. Alicia and Erin really posted a genius review of the movie written, as they would say, in the key of Phoebe. It would be almost completely accurate if it mentioned the incredible applicability of the lessons learned therein to real life and how OMG AMAZING it is that MOTHERFUCKING ILIA KULIK (1998 Olympic Figure Skating Champion) plays a small role. Also, around there it should be mentioned that Ilia Kulik may have been the first in a very long line of figure skaters I have fallen in love with.

Bring It On: All Or Nothing

SHABOOYA SHA SHA SHABOOYA ROLE CALL: My name is Erin, and I'm a drunk lesbian, and I'm here to review the third, and most sexually appealing, installment of the Bring It On franchise, Bring It On: All Or Nothing.

This movie is my personal dream come true. It's the movie that introduced the krumping criterion.

It has Hayden Panetierre in the role she was born to play: a cheerleader with the ability to regenerate...my lesboner for her. Her totally weird eyebrows aside, she is still a cheerleader, which is really the only standard I have for girls.

Since I am four cosmopolitans to the wind and not feeling terribly verbose, let's get down to the business. The business of cheerkrumping!

Criteria:

• 10 points to THE MAX in racial tension. When Hayden Panehottierre's dad cheats on his taxes (because that's the only kind of crime white people commit), her family is forced to move to the neightborhood of Crenshaw Heights, which, like most neighborhoods that end in Heights, is downright lousy with minorities, particularly Solange Knowles, looking surprisingly unfug.
  
• 10 points for pursuing a love interest. Although her real love is krumping -- and ending racism forever -- there is a boy thrown in there, too, just to foil delusional fools like me.
• 10 points for two or three training montages.
• 10 points for getting kicked off the team. She was actually kicked off two teams -- her white team turns their back on her, and her minorities team kicks her off when she refuses to acknowledge Solange's captaincy. Ladies, ladies, there is enough cheerleading for all of you to do in front of me.
• 10 points for a message of both teamwork and compromise. We must all krump together if we are to
• 10 points for the national level prize in this movie being a spot in a Rihanna music video, obviously, since Rihanna LOVES cheerleaders. LOVES them. Tell your friends.

Bonus Points:

• 1 point for a competition between the races at a quintessentially racial thing...
• 1 point for, may I remind you, krumping

• 1 point for a skill brawl -- please see above. Clearly Hotden Hotdentierre brings it. She BRINGS IT ON. What you're seeing up there is actually part of one of the training montages, when one of her minority friends is telling her to "Get mad. GET MAD" because that's what drives all ethnic dance impulses: rage.
  
• 1 point for an asshole boyfriend who I can't remember right now.
• 1 point for a FANTASTIC tiebreaker that involves nevernude fatigues, rump-shaking, and racism.
• 1 point for giving me, the queerburger viewer SO many goosebumps. Like, so many that it makes it awkward for the other people in the room, like that time I made orgasm noises during that one episode of LOST while Alicia and Rob were in the room. Sorry guys! You can stop bringing it up now.
• 1 point for guest judge Rihanna, back when she was just getting started and actually sang songs I wanted to listen to.
• The original love interest was supposed to be this douchebag

who Straightlicia gives a 6.5. But at the last minute, the producers of this cinematic masterpiece made a well-informed decision and made it me, Erin:

And I am a 10.

• And finally, 1 point for an unintentionally hilarious credit sequence, featuring our entire cast performing as a cohesive group in a terrible version of a thankfully unaired music video for Rihanna's hit song "Pon De Replay". Yikes.

FINAL SCORE: 74.5 + ALL OF MY BONERS

GOODNIGHT

Center Stage

This post is meant to be sung in the key of Phoebe.

Author's note: Let's be real here, you guys. This isn't a teen competition movie. We're doing this for Phoebe's sake because we love her and we think she's wonderful.


This is the best movie of all time. It taught me how to live, it taught me how to love, it has influenced every move I've ever made. Every move in my home life, in my love life, in my academic life, in my extracurricular life, in my sex life. Especially in my sex life. This taught me how a man should love and please a woman. Center Stage is cinematic poetry, and seeing it for the first time changed my life forever. The love scene is still the pinnacle of my existence, and to this day nothing in this plebeian world will ever compare to the fire it set in my loins.

Criteria:

• 0 points because this movie didn't see the strife between races, but there was tension in my love muscles
• 10 points for pursuing a love interest, not liking the love interest anymore, and then finding out you were being pursued the whole time, which is EVERY GIRL'S DREAM EVER
  
• 0 points because the coryphées chose to find inspiration in themselves rather than from a mentor
  
• 10 points for a mid-movie setback of Jonathan being too much of a philistine to see the true beauty and potential of Jody's "bad feet"
• 10 points for the entire film comprising of a training montage
• 0 points for all of the danseurs being too dedicated to their craft to leave the school
• 10 points for a message of finding a happy accord among fellow artists
  
• 10 points for everyone striving towards an academy goal, but MINUS FIVE POINTS because all the terpsichoreans earned an accolade in the end

Bonus points:

• 0 points for a competition between races; this is a competition between artists
• 0 points because because krumping isn't elegant enough for a masterpiece like that
• 1 point for a tango of talent
• 1 point for a boyfriend who was promiscuous Ethan Stiefel, but when you're the most perfect man in the world, that can be forgiven
• 1 point for parents who just don't understand what it means to follow a dream that consumes your lfie
• 0 points for a non-existent mentor not falling from grace
• 1 point for the chance to reach the pinnacle of achievement in artistic movement
• 0 points for there not being a tie-breaker because she was in a league of her own
• 1 point because I get chills down my spine every time I see them perform as a cohesive group
• 0 points because, although there were several luminaries of the ballet and figure skating worlds, none of them were judges for the final performance
• Author's note: We're going to step in here because Phoebe would give him 45 points but we're going to award him a whopping two points. Back into character, Phoebe would describe Cooper like so: Ethan Stiefel. Light of my life, fire of my loins, my sin, my soul. E-than Stie-fel. The tip of the tongue, taking a trip of four steps down the pallate, to lisp at three on the teeth.
• 0 points because the artistic integrity of this film would have been compromised had there been a "humorous" credit sequence

Final Score: 52

FAIL, CENTER STAGE. FAIL TO THE MAX.

Friends, Romans, Countrymen

HEY YOU GUYS. We're going to be watching about a million teen competition movies this weekend. WHO'S STOKED FOR US TO FINALLY GET BACK INTO THIS?