So last night we watched Stick It with the kids. It's a pretty standard story of a bad girl who walks away from gymnastics only to be forced back into it when she crashes her bike through the picture window of a house under construction and she comes before the judge who is Flo from Alice.
Okay, actually this was a sports movie that was completely atypical. For one thing, it didn't suck. For another, it had a completely unpredictable ending. For a third, it managed to both celebrate and criticize the sport it's about, which is a pretty neat trick.
I'm not sure why this movie didn't do better, except maybe that it's not your standard "plucky girl wins the championship" story. Whenever I see a movie like this that could have been a formulaic piece of crap and manages to be a real movie instead, I wonder why more movies don't have this level of ambition. Perhaps because this movie didn't do very well, and most people would rather watch a formulaic piece of crap.
Missy Peregrym from Reaper starred, and her performance in this movie made me realize that she's just criminally underused on that show. She's capable of doing so much more than "Sam, where were you last night?" and the writers oughta let her. As soon as the strike is over.
