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This article is about the 2006 film. For other uses, see Stick It (disambiguation).

Stick It is a 2006 American teen comedy-drama film starring Jeff Bridges, Missy Peregrym and Vanessa Lengies written and directed by Bring It On writer Jessica Bendinger; the film marks her directorial debut and to date her only directorial work. It was produced by Touchstone Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment and was released in theatres on April 28, 2006.

Plot

Haley Graham is a rebellious 17-year-old who has a run-in with the law when she and two friends stage an illegal bike race through a residential construction site in Plano, Texas. Arrested and brought before a judge, Haley agrees to a deal where she can avoid punishment if she returns to the world of professional gymnastics.

Haley was once considered one of the most talented and promising gymnasts in the U.S. One year earlier, she made it to the World Championships, but she walked out of competition in the middle of the finals, costing the American team the gold medal, ruining both her reputation and her future prospects. Haley retired from the sport that day.

Haley enrolls in the elite Vickerman Gymnastics Academy (VGA) in Houston, her ultimate nightmare, run by legendary coach Burt Vickerman. Haley has a talk with Vickerman, who offers to handle her training until she can enter an upcoming invitational competition; she decides to use the prize money to settle the property damage claims she owes and then retire once again. Disliking the sport's rigid rules and intense training schedule, Haley is reluctant to come out of retirement. Her attitude toward her fellow gymnasts, as well as her past, causes conflicts.

At the invitational, Haley's talent shines and her return from gymnastics retirement seems for the better. But all is not what it seems in the scoring system. She starts to remember one of the many reasons why she retired to begin with: the flaws in judging. The panels do not look at the difficulty of the move nor do they look at the technique; they merely take deductions for unimportant minor errors. As Haley says, "It doesn't matter how well you do. It's how well you follow their rules."

In addition, Haley is severely stressed by her domineering mother, Alice, who has arrived to watch the meet. Her conduct at the World Championship ("Worlds") has not been forgotten by the other athletes and they treat her with open hostility. Haley finally breaks down in the middle of her balance beam routine and, in a repeat of the World Championships a year earlier, leaves the arena before completing the competition. However, before she leaves, she reveals to Vickerman the reason why she walked out of Worlds the first time: she had just learned of Alice's affair with her coach, leading to a divorce and Haley losing contact with her father.

Haley returns to the judge and states that she is ready to accept her punishment, but the judge tells Haley that someone (obviously Vickerman) has just paid off all of her debts, meaning she is no longer under any legal issues and having "jerks for parents" doesn't need to ruin her life.

Haley then approaches Vickerman, who reveals that he used money left to him by her father to pay for coaching. Vickerman persuades Haley to remain with the academy a while longer so she can continue with her training to reach Nationals. Although she did not complete the invitational, Haley continues to train and, with three of her teammates Mina Hoyt, Wei Wei Yong, and Joanne Charis, qualifies for the National Championships.

The biased judging leaves her far back in the all-around standings, but this does not keep her out of the event finals. In the first event final, vault, Mina executes an extremely difficult maneuver perfectly but receives a low score (9.5 out of 10). When Vickerman questions the judges, he learns that Mina was penalized on the technicality of showing a bra strap. Haley is next up. However, instead of vaulting, she shows her bra strap to the judges and forfeits her turn in disgust (otherwise known as a "scratch"). The other gymnasts do the same, forcing the judges to award Mina the vault gold medal anyway.

Haley's bold action sparks a movement. The gymnasts realize that they each share a feeling of disgust with the system of scoring, and so decide to sabotage the competition by choosing their own "winners" and then scratching out on purpose to ensure their victory. It seems the movement will be ruined when Tricia Skilken (Tarah Paige), a longtime judges' favorite and Haley's former teammate and best friend, arrives and threatens the choice of winners by competing herself, but Tricia ends up joining the movement and scratches in the last event as well. What started out as a gymnastics competition turns into a small revolution for the rules and Haley learns that she has been offered several athletic scholarships to compete in NCAA gymnastics.

Cast

Doubles

  • Isabelle Severino – Missy Peregrym's gymnastics double (main)
  • Jessica Miyagi – Missy Peregrym's gymnastics double (beam routine – IG Classic)
  • Annie Gagnon – Vanessa Lengies's gymnastics double
  • Kate Stopper – Maddy Curley's gymnastics double
  • Tacia Van Vleet – Nikki SooHoo's gymnastics double

Cameos

Soundtrack

  1. We Run This – Missy Elliott
  2. Abra Cadabra – Talib Kweli
  3. Beware of the Boys – Panjabi MC (Mundian To Bach Ke)
  4. Fire Fire – Fannypack/Mr. Vegas
  5. Dance Commander – Electric Six
  6. Game, The – Jurassic 5
  7. If I Only Knew – Lisa Lavie
  8. Breakdown – The Toques featuring Mark Foster
  9. Nu Nu (Yeah Yeah) – Fannypack (Double J & Hayze Extended mix)
  10. Crowded – Jeannie Ortega featuring Papoose
  11. Anthem Part Two – Blink-182
  12. Hittin' The Bars – Mike Simpson[3]
  13. Come Baby Come – K7
  14. Outta My Way – Damone
  15. Love Song – J.P. Amedori (Bonus Track)

The movie also features brief pieces of other songs, which were not included in the soundtrack, including Green Day's "Brain Stew" and "Holiday", My Morning Jacket's "One Big Holiday" and Fall Out Boy's "Our Lawyer Made Us Change The Name Of This Song So We Wouldn't Get Sued" and "I Slept With Someone in Fall Out Boy and All I Got Was this Stupid Song Written About Me."

Reception

Box office

Stick It was released on April 28, 2006 and grossed $10,803,610 in the opening weekend. The movie grossed $26,910,736 total in the domestic market and $5,066,112 internationally for a total of $31,976,848 after 13 weeks at the box office.[2] The film had the highest per screen average on its opening weekend with 2,038 movie theaters, making an average of $5,301 per screen.[2]

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a score of 31%, based on 100 reviews, with an average rating of 5/10. The site's consensus states: "Director Jessica Bendinger is unable to transfer her winning Bring It On formula to the world of gymnastics, despite Missy Peregrym's strong lead performance."[4] On Metacritic, it has a score of 52 out 100, based on reviews from 25 critics.[5] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave it a grade of B+.[6] Critic Nathan Lee of The New York Times gave the film a positive review, stating, "A spry teenage comedy that gets everything right, Stick It takes the usual batch of underdogs, dirt bags, mean girls and bimbos and sends them somersaulting through happy clichés and unexpected invention."[7] Roger Ebert gave the film 2 out of 4 and wrote: "The movie seems to fear that if it pauses long enough to actually be about gymnastics, the audience will grow restless."[8]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Stick It (2006) - Financial Information". The Numbers.
  2. ^ a b c "Stick It". Box Office Mojo.
  3. ^ https://www.mikesimpson.com/film-tv/film-scores/stick-it.html [bare URL]
  4. ^ "Stick It (2006)". Rotten Tomatoes.
  5. ^ "Stick It". Metacritic.
  6. ^ "Cinemascore". Archived from the original on 2018-12-20.
  7. ^ Lee, Nathan (28 April 2006). "Teenage Gymnasts 'Stick It' to the Man". The New York Times.
  8. ^ Ebert, Roger (April 27, 2006). "Stick It movie review & film summary (2006)". Chicago Sun-Times.
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