Sugar & Spice

Director: Francine McDougall Francine McDougall

Overview

The directorial debut of Australian filmmaker Francine McDougall, this teen comedy stars Marley Shelton as Diane, captain of the Lincoln High School A-squad cheerleaders, the most popular girls in their school. They include born-again Christian Hannah (Rachel Blanchard), the rebellious Kansas (Mena Suvari), late-night talk show fan Cleo (Melissa George), and brainy geek Lucy (Sarah Marsh). When Diane learns that she's pregnant, she and her stud quarterback boyfriend Jack (James Marsden) get hitched and quickly learn that marriage with children is an expensive proposition. With some advice from Kansas' convict mom (Sean Young), the squad embarks on a plan to rob a bank, but their peppy enthusiasm and patented cheerleading moves may give them away to the authorities.

Product Details

Release Date:	01/17/2017
UPC:	0888574462161
Original Release:	2001
Rating:	PG-13
Source:	Warner Archives
Language:	English
Time:	1:24:00
Sales rank:	20,375

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Marley Shelton	Diane Weston
Mena Suvari	Kansas
Marla Sokoloff	Lisa
Melissa George	Cleo
Rachel Blanchard	Hannah
Sara Marsh	Lucy,Actor
Alexandra Holden	Fern
Sean Young	Mrs. Hill
James Marsden	Jack Bartlett
W. Earl Brown	Hank
Adam Busch	Geeky Guy
Jake Hoffman	Ted
Nate Maher	Chris
David Belenky	Bruce
Kevin Kling	Factory Worker
Dave Quimby	Apartment Manager
Jacy Dumermuth	Food Valley Cashier
Wiley Harker	Principal Smith
Stevie Ray Rentfrow	Dennis
Kirsten Frantzich	Dee Dee
Christopher Denton	Ed
Jan Puffer	Edna
Claudia Wilkens	Grandmother
Jeff Hopkins	Police Officer
Kevin Joseph Klein	FBI Agent
Jeremy Kent Jackson	Football Player No. 1
Jamison Hasse	Football Player No. 2
Jessie Schoen	Butch Girl
Susan Fuller	Bank Loan Officer
Andy Hubbell	Husband
Katie Kelly	Nurse
Ann Kellog	Mink
Isabell Monk	Inmate No. 1
Miriam Must	Inmate No. 2
Jennifer Snell	Inmate No. 3
Andrea Guilford	Lamaze Instructor
Bonnie Benjamin-Olson	Lunch Lady
Matt Guidry	Male Reporter
Li Ning	Dim Sum Charlie
Laura McKinley Anderson	Average Girl No. 1
Cassie Fox	Average Girl No. 2
Kurt Loder	Himself
Jerry Springer	Himself
Mark Mothersbaugh	Composer

Technical Credits

Mandy Nelson

Francine McDougall	Director
Mandy Nelson	Screenwriter
Juel Bestrop	Casting
James Fierro	Stunts
Wendy Finerman	Producer
Jeanne McCarthy	Casting
Greg Mooradian	Executive Producer
Matt Moore	Executive Producer
Paul Murphy	Special Effects
Claire Rudnick Polstein	Executive Producer

Editorial Reviews

The last thing the movie world needs is another teenage comedy about conniving cheerleaders, but to be fair, this cheerfully vulgar entry in the teen sweepstakes hits the mark more often than not. Like most recent movies of its ilk, it owes nearly everything to Amy Heckerling's buoyant 1995 feature Clueless, right down to its specific female vernacular. Unlike that charming romantic confection, however, this film plays a bit darker. Sugar & Spice usually scores when it focuses on being a vicious satire of teen woes, and is less adept at creating a story and characters viewers should actually care much about. The spirited performers who populate the cast, however -- including Melissa George, Marla Sokoloff, and American Beauty ingénue Mena Suvari -- keep the proceedings engaging. Once intended as a unflinching black comedy (and originally called Sugar & Spice & Semiautomatics), the material was cleaned up by the filmmakers after the tragic Columbine shooting in Colorado in 1999. The result is wildly uneven and sometimes incoherent, but when the movie has its head on straight, the zingers fall right into place.

All Movie Guide - Jason Clark

The caper unspools with the right mix of innocence and mean-spiritedness, driven by a noisy power-pop soundtrack. At one point the Lincoln marching band plays a brassy version of the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop," and the movie as a whole sometimes recalls the demented anarchy of Allan Arkush's "Rock 'n' Roll High School," which featured that great punk band at the tail end of its prime. The movie is full of scattershot gags and indifferent acting, but you get the feeling that it's bad on purpose, which makes it, given the number of teenage movies that are terrible by accident, not bad at all.

New York Times - A.O. Scott