Diane: Marley Shelton	Jack: James Marsden
Kansas: Mena Suvari	Lisa: Marla Sokoloff
Fern: Alexandra Holden	Hannah: Rachel Blanchard
Mother of Kansas: Sean Young	Dim Sum Charlie: Li Ning
Lucy: Sara Marsh	Cleo: Melissa George
Director: Francine McDougall

30 Second Bottom Line: The leader of a high school cheer leading squad decides to rob a bank, after she becomes pregnant, gets married and finds she and her husband have a large cash shortfall each month.

Story Line: There are eight key characters that drive the story; there's one guy among them. Five of the girls are best friends and are on the varsity cheer leading team. One girl wants to be a cheerleader and while she is an expert on the technical rules, she has two left feet when it comes to executing the moves. The seventh girl has the talent to be on the squad, but her hillbilly heritage does not fit into the suburban life style of the varsity cheerleaders. Finally there is Jack (James Marsden), quarterback of the football team, who falls for Diane (Marley Shelton), the leader of the pack.

Jack and Diane see each other and it's sex at first sight. They are among numerous nominees to be the homecoming king and queen. Satire is used to show two students, who, while qualified, don't fit the image of the blond bombshell to be queen and the handsome star athlete to be king; their pitch to an audience falls on deaf ears. In contrast, Diane and Jack are received enthusiastically. When Jack tells the student body that one of his three wishes in life is for Diane to go to the homecoming dance with him, they embrace and kiss passionately on the stage to a roaring crowd.

Diane and her four girlfriends are so much in synch that not only are their moves right in step on the gym floor and football field, but their menstrual cycles come on the same day of the month.

Kansas's (Mena Suvari) mom is in prison for killing her father. Hannah (Rachel Blanchard) is a religious girl who had her first orgasm while riding a horse at a church camp. She is also the moral center when it comes to the pros and cons of having an abortion. Lucy (Sara Marsh) is the geek in the group, who doesn't want to get into any type of trouble because she is expecting to get a scholarship to Harvard (a la, Derek in Save the Last Dance). Finally, there's Cleo (Melissa George), whose goal in life is to meet and marry Conan O'Brien, the late night talk show host.

On the night of the homecoming dance, Diane and Jack have sex in her bedroom before they come downstairs to say goodbye to her parents. They announce that they are going to have a baby and the parents are delighted; however, when they say they are going to get married, the parents disown them. They marry anyway and apply for a home loan, for which they are turned down. Next they move into a run down apartment and Jack works at a fast food place, where he gets fired because of his incompetence. He gets a job at the local Video Update store, which he manages to keep. With the minimum wage he earns, he cannot make enough money to support his family, in spite of his positive attitude and hard work.

Diane decides that she can rob the bank in the grocery story she works in, with a little help from her friends, and that will solve all of her problems. She convinces each of the other four girls to go along by showing how the money will help them. For example, Lucy will have the funds to go to Harvard, even if her scholarship does not come through. Hannah can give money to the starving children they see on TV, holding the hands of Hollywood movie stars.

They decide to dress in costumes so they will not be recognized during the robbery. Although the girls don't plan on pulling the trigger on a gun, they use weapons so they can encourage people to cooperate. They go to the local illegal gun dealer and when they don't have the $1,500 needed to purchase the weapons, he suggests that if his introverted daughter, who wants to be a cheerleader, can be part of the varsity team, he'll let them have the guns free.

Lisa (Marla Sokoloff), the girl with two left feet, figures out who robbed the bank and she goes to the police. She is the narrator of the film and is in the store at the time of the robbery and notices an illegal cheer leading move the girls use to reach and disable the security camera. Just about when it looks like the girls may be arrested and convicted, Diane develops a plan to give Lisa something she wants, if she has selective memory of events during the robbery.

Tell Me More About It: Wow…I got through the story line without saying how much I did not like the movie. Sugar and Spice has considerable promise to be an excellent film but squanders it with mixed messages on morality. It does a good job of showing the consequences of being sexually active; there's always the risk of pregnancy, and some people will see the girl as a whore. Furthermore, your parents might no longer support you, and with no skills and working at minimum wage jobs, you can't earn enough to support yourself and a child.

There is plenty of satire, some of it reasonably good. The best thing about this film is the worse thing about it. The satire is too sophisticated for the young teenage audience that will see the film. When one "eye witness" says he figured the robbers were Asian because they were so acrobatic, the police go to a Chinese restaurant owner called Dim Sum Charlie (Li Ning) and arrest him. Of course, he had nothing to do with it, but the film does make a point about how stereotypes can be injurious to people.

When the girls commit armed robbery, it's presented as a joke, when it's not a funny topic. A parent in jail provides counseling on how to pull a hold up. Kansas visits her mother (Sean Young ) in prison, and instead of being afraid that her daughter will likely also end up behind bars, her mother's reply to the question of how to steal is, "That's the sweetest thing I ever heard of...it's like asking for help with your homework." In one way it's very much tongue in cheek satire, which would be OK if the girls learned a lesson about right and wrong that will guide their lives in the future.

I know that robbing banks is a disaster waiting to happen, but the young minds that see this movie may very well walk away thinking… that could work out. I'm not suggesting that the film will encourage people to rob banks, but often when people make the wrong choices their lives are changed forever. Here, the girls suffer only an inconvenience rather than it ruining their lives. The subtle messages in the film may be drowned out by the in your face style, short skirts and push up bras, so that you can't hear the message because your eyes are in control of your brain.

Marley Shelton: Valentine	James Marsden: X-Men
Mena Suvari: American Beauty	Marla Sokoloff: The Practice-TV
Alexandra Holden: In and Out	Rachel Blanchard: Road Trip
Sean Young: Amati Girls	Li Ning: Wonder Seven
Sara Marsh: Debut	Melissa George: Dark City
Francine McDougall: The Date