Just when you thought it was safe go back to the cinema multiplex and you’d escaped the summer deluge of ‘Teen High School College movies™’, along comes another and it’s as full of cheese as ever.

‘Bring it On’ has something for the lads and something for the girls, namely a Bikini Car-wash (Phrwooah, hey lads, hey) and lots of sleepovers and female bonding, though this could be for the boys in the audience as well (whatever tickles your fancy). It’s basically a movie of a year in the life of an American High School Cheerleading Team, which follows their route from practice, to the National Championships, with all the loves, argument and torments in between.

Dunst plays Torrance the newly elected captain of the Cheerleader Squad, who comes across disaster after disaster in trying to take her team, the Rancho Toro’s, to the National Championships. What makes her task doubly difficult is that the Toros’ are already National Champs and have won more trophies than the School’s Football Team, on top of all that Torrance soon discovers their winning routines have been nicked (by the previous captain) from local rivals, the East Compton Clovers. However nobody’s ever noticed because the Clovers are from the rough side of town and can’t afford to compete in events. This is about to change, so it’s a race against time to get a new routine and new team members together for a showdown in the National Finals.

‘Bring it On’ started with so much promise, as the opening Cheerleading routine was full of sass, sexiness and humour, which meant this could have been a clever and wry attack on the over top sweetly sick activities of American Culture, a la Drop Dead Gorgeous and Election. This, unfortunately, fails to materialise and what’s left is a standard American High School movie, which is ultimately far too predictable to add anything new to a genre, which is desperately in need of some fresh input.

It could have been an attack on Cheerleading, and the bitchiness, falseness and melodramatics that come with it, but ultimately it’s a simple movie about Cheerleading. This is fine, the girls are all stunning (but none look like they are of High School age, as per usual) and all the lads are Jocks or the quiet mysterious hunky type (all the clichés are pampered to) but it could have been a lot better than merely fine. A likeable movie that will entertain, but you can’t help but wonder whether an opportunity has been missed.