by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2019 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved
At 8 last night Charles and I watched Lifetime’s latest
cheerleader movie, Undercover Cheerleader,
and even more than The Cheerleader Escort this was an example of a Lifetime movie that would have been
considerably better if the writer, Lauren Balson Carter, and the director,
Danny J. Boyle (definitely not
the Danny Boyle who made Slumdog Millionaire and Trainspotting, which is why he uses the initial to avoid
confusion), had just known when to stop. The plot: Autumn Bailey (Kayla
Wallace) has just been moved across the country from New York City to San
Francisco because her mom — who’s raising her as a single parent (there’s only
a passing reference to her father and screenwriter Carter makes it seem like
he’s dead) — has just got her “dream job” as CEO for a tech firm. In her
previous high school Autumn worked on the student newspaper and mom naturally
assumes she’s going to do that here at Brookview High as well — but when Autumn
shows up, the kids in the cheerleading squad tag her and decide that with her
pert appearance and her dance background (she’s asked if Brookview offers dance
and finds that cheerleading is the closest thing to it on campus) she’d be a
natural.
Kara (Maddie Phillips), the editor of the school paper, and her
sort-of boyfriend Max (Ryan Grantham) — who’s so short and boyish he comes up
to about her shoulders, and he’s obviously got a crush on Kara that is totally
unreciprocated (which made me wonder if writer Carter was warming up to make
Max either Gay or one of those straight “incels” who gets mad to the point of
homicidal mania at the girls who won’t date him and the cuter, butcher or
richer boys they will date) —
suggest that Bailey join the cheerleading squad but write a series of articles
for the school paper, signed “The Undercover Cheerleader,” about the toxic
aspects of cheerleader culture. The imdb.com page on this film is missing some
key information, including who plays Bailey’s mother as well as two other
important characters: Dot, the cheerleading coach, who runs the squad with so
intense a level of discipline she makes R. Lee Ermey’s drill sergeant in
Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket
seem warm and fuzzy by comparison; and a Black girl who has enrolled in
Brookview specifically to become a cheerleader there because Brookview is noted
for having won the cheerleading competition in their area five years in a row.
This is depicted as a rare bright spot for them because the actual athletic
teams the cheerleaders are supposed to be leading cheers for all suck. Bailey
gets on the cheerleading squad partly because the bad girl, Jenny (marvelously
acted by Samantha Schimmer), wants her there — “I want to keep my enemies close
by,” she tells a friend — and she also meets Jordan Dunn (André Anthony), who
takes a shine to her and invites her to a double date with Jenny and her football-player boyfriend, Bode (yet another actor
regrettably unidentified on imdb.com, even though his crisis of conscience is
well played and he’s almost as cute as the guy playing Jordan). We get the idea
that Bailey is feeling conflicted between her role as the “undercover
cheerleader” and her growing affection for her squad-mates (except for ice-cold
bitch Jenny) and her sense of loyalty to them and also to Jordan.
One day Dot,
looking for an excuse to fire the Black girl from the squad, makes her do a
highly dangerous gymnastics maneuver even though the girl hasn’t trained in
gymnastics, and though we don’t see it (obviously the folks at Reel One
Entertainment didn’t have enough of a budget for a stunt double), the girl
lands wrong and fractures her ankle. Bailey plans a party to raise money for
her care — only the one available venue is her own home, which she can use
because her mom is going on a business trip — and the plans for the party
advance from a relatively decorous affair to a rave-style event with a beer keg
and presumably a lot of pairing-off between the kids for sex. This is when
writer Carter and director Boyle really start taking things off the rails:
Bella (Samantha Corrigan), one of the suspects as to who the “undercover
cheerleader” really is, gets run off the road by a motorcyclist as she’s
walking home from the party. She’s O.K. but it later turns out that Bode did it
at the insistence of cheerleader coach Dot, who wanted to scare all the
cheerleaders so whichever one is providing the information to the school paper
as the “undercover cheerleader” will stop. Later another cheerleader who’s
suspected of being the leaker, Samantha (Mya Lowe), is also run down by someone
riding a motorcycle, only as she falls she hits her head against a rock and
dies from the injury. Bailey’s mom comes home early from her business trip
because she’s naturally upset with Bailey for having a wild party in their
home, after which someone was killed, though of course once she turns up and
Bailey confesses to mom that her life is in danger, Mom instantly becomes
supportive. At the scene of Samantha’s murder Bailey finds a broken-off rear-view
mirror for a motorcycle, and then at Jordan’s place she sees a bike missing
just that sort of mirror and concludes her boyfriend is the killer — only he
isn’t; his dad had reported that bike stolen the morning of the incident.
Jordan and Bailey make up surprisingly quickly (given that she’s just accused
him of murder) and they run through the various suspects, including Bode and
also Max, whom Boyle has shown lurking around some of the scenes in a sinister
fashion. Bailey appeals to her editor Kara for support — only [spoiler
alert!] Kara turns out to be Samantha’s
killer, though Carter isn’t all that clear as to her motive. It seems to have
something to do with having hoped Bailey would be her friend in high school,
only to see her drawn into the lives of the cheerleaders she was supposedly
involved with only to write about and expose them. Kara feeds Bailey drugged
tea and grabs a tire iron, apparently to hit her with it, but is herself
brought down by the Seventh Cavalry-style appearance of Bailey’s mom. Six
months later Bella, now out of school, is the new cheerleading coach and Bailey
is still in the program, having decided she likes cheerleading and she likes
being the girlfriend of a football player even better. As for Jenny, she gets
her comeuppance by being kept on the cheerleading squad but only as the other girls’ water girl. We’d been seeing
some better-than-average movies on Lifetime lately but Undercover
Cheerleader is a return to their old
slovenly ways: a silly plot way
too dependent on coincidence, a level of emotional manipulation that
starts at 11, anachronistic details (the
double date involving Jenny, Bode, Bailey and Jordan takes place at, of all locales,
a drive-in movie theatre — are there any of those left anymore?) and a ridiculous and head-scratching final
twist that involves a seemingly level-headed character suddenly turning into a
manipulative bitch. We didn’t even get any hot, lubricious soft-core porn
scenes to relieve the dreary acid of human unkindness!
