By Spencer Coile
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Growing up, there was no place more sacred than my local Blockbuster. I remember scouring the walls on a Friday night, searching the aisles to find the right movie to take home that weekend. At times, I knew exactly what I wanted, but there were other times when I walked in clueless and would let the cover art persuade me. I would always rent just one and consume it multiple times throughout the weekend - especially if it was a movie I loved.
2001 was when, as a 9 year-old, I started taking film seriously. I would rent the “classics” and learn about foreign cinema. However, one night, I noticed a peculiar looking DVD cover in the new movie section - one that featured a collection of high school cheerleaders with hideous doll masks robbing a bank. It looked like careless fun, and I was instantly compelled to rent it. It was then my love for Sugar & Spice was born....
Clocking in at a mere 73 minutes (not including a short epilogue and end credits), Sugar & Spice is exactly what you’d expect from a black comedy about a group of cheerleaders who decide to rob a bank after their squad leader gets pregnant. Major premise aside, there are no twists or turns, nothing goes horribly awry for our heroines, and miraculously, they get away with the heist! But following the cultural phenomenon that was Bring It On just one year prior, Sugar & Spice seemed to come and go with little fanfare. It’s a scrappy little story that feels cobbled together rather than feeling like a cohesive whole, but that doesn’t make it any less fun.
It opens with our intrepid girl squad posing for their group mugshot, the opening credits introducing us to each individually. There’s Diane (Marley Shelton), the mastermind. There’s Kansas (Mena Suvari), the rebel. There’s Hannah (Rachel Blanchard), the virgin. There’s Cleo (Melissa George), the stalker. And of course, no squad would be complete without the brain, Lucy (Sara Marsh). Today I realize each fulfills a specific high school movie stereotype, but when I was 9, it felt practically revelatory - as if I hadn’t seen a comedy like it before. Plus, it’s where I learned what a virgin and a rebel was (my mom had fun explaining those to me).
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More than anything, Sugar & Spice is precisely that: it’s a quick and easy sugar rush, but one that has a little kick to it as well. It utilizes its singular use of the “f” with a mean-spirited but completely hilarious line reading from Suvari that scandalized me as a kid. Plus, it introduced me to James Marsden as a childhood heartthrob. In my adolescent mind, it had everything a goofy high school comedy should possess: easily quotable one-liners, a mostly female ensemble, and a run-time that moves so quickly, you have no choice but to watch it again.
And I sure did. How could I not? It’s jam packed with tiny, almost throwaway moments that remain etched in my mind. For instance, when the squad meets with a shady arms dealer to buy guns, he asks how many bullets. After giggling amongst themselves, Diane responds:
Bullets? No bullets. Oh my gosh, these are just to scare people. Kinda like a round-off, back handspring, whip back, double full. You never really use it - you just want the opposing squad to know you’ve got it.
To commemorate its status as a personal “Over & Over,” I sat down with a friend this past weekend to show her Sugar & Spice for the first time, and I was nervous. It’s a treasure that I hold near and dear, as a film that grew up with me. That said, I recognize it’s also mindless entertainment, one that offers surface level commentary on sisterhood and girl power, not to mention some seriously dated and problematic jokes. Still, my friend laughed just as hard as I did, and it took me back to that day I picked it off the shelf at my local Blockbuster. And even still, it feels like that special kind of movie you feel as though only you have a relationship with. But I guess that’s what makes it a quintessential "Over & Over."