fatherchristmas89 I enjoyed this film, and thought it was quite good until it got silly. It was quite enjoyable nevertheless, but not to be taken seriously.It is about a girl who is in court for trespassing and breaking a window, and as punishment is sent back to gymnastics training. I took it that Haley was very naturally talented and a bit of a prodigy. It didn't bother me that she hadn't trained for a few years, that can be looked past. I loved the narration when she was on the beam - 'pointless arms and stick your butt out'.It showed Haley training in the gym and becoming more serious, until the film started to get silly. Lines such as 'let us be in control of the scores' and 'the judges are just jealous'. No they are not! they are there to judge you, it's their job. You are there by your own free will and you judges are not making you do this (well in most circumstances). Plus comparing gymnastics to SEAL training isn't going to win any new fans, just anger people. They are two different kettles of fish.Secondly, no one would ever have a mass scratch unless there was a big political reason. There is too much at stake and you can't be certain that the other gymnasts wouldn't break the pact and perform and then win. Of course you have to get marked down for something (I agree the uniform isn't the best one) otherwise we would have a string of perfect 10s again. Plus the break dancing on the beam? why? why waste your life's training? Why not compete the best you can and then question the unfair marks. That is what happens in reality and marks get changed.If the film had focused on Haley's training and change of character it would have been more interesting instead of the cliché, unrealistic, silly ending.

p-stepien Ultrahip BMX extraordinaire (and former gymnast revelation) Haley Graham (Missy Peregrym) gets busted after pool-jumping and causing some minor damage to a house in construction. As a result the judge sentences here to enrol into an elite gymnastics programme run by Burt Vickerman (Jeff Bridges). At first attempting to rebel and sabotage the training she as sure as the snow is white becomes enticed by the opportunity that was presented to her.The whole movie starts off with several extremely false notes with a script taken from "Dumb and Dumber". After causing a small incident at a construction site one of the Three Stooges decides to sound the alarm by opening a door. Then Haley forced to run on foot decides to throw away all her clothes - the only reason being this served as a way to deliver the shock revelation that the opening sequence xtreme BMX jump was actually performed by a girl. After which she proceeds to run down the middle of the street as if to scream 'Hey! Look! I'm here! I'm guilty! Bust me!"Fast-forward to court, where we soon find out that breaking a window causes damages worth 40,000 USD (one pricey piece of glass...). A few minutes later with have a scene, where Haley's co-culprits drive up on their bikes to Haley and in the presence of the social worker responsible for dropping her off to the gym programme thank her for not ratting them out...Just hilarious...Admitedly it does get better once we get to the gymnastics program and Jeff Bridges takes control of proceedings. Nonetheless the whole supporting cast is lame (fronted by Missy Pelegrym) and the absolute crappiness of jokes / lines only punctuate their lameness. It does seem that the scriptwriter is well versed in gymnastics, which strongly benefits the jump-and-bump storyline, but hinders the rest of the movie as his grasp of anything outside of the sport seems minimal.All in all the gymnastics and Jeff Bridges do make the movie watchable and somewhat enjoyable, but there is no avoiding it: This is a crap picture with bad direction and a stupendously stupid script.

someofusarebrave I liked the subplot. I liked the insertion of Joanne's Mama's relationship with the Coach, bringing more young gymnasts back to train with the Coach. I also think the movie could have been longer. Easily.I would have seen this movie way faster if I had known that Haley was going to lead a friggin' revolution.Why can't we have more movies like this one? I wish more movies dared to push the damn envelope a little.I miss laughing this much at movies. SO many props for a movie that for once features a female lead whose entire life is not wrapped around the possibility of a romance with some guy. Word in women's circles has got to travel faster to the young folks when movies like this come out, that's all I'm sayin.'This movie rocks.

johnnyboyz What do I know about gymnastics? What prior link or connection have I had to gymnastics? What did I learn about gymnastics from 2006 film Stick It? The collective answer to all three is "absolutley nothing at all". But what I can share in reference to gymnastics, and in particular young American girls going through a process of gymnastic trials and tribulations, is the said sport going on during the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The Olympics being what they are, that odd occasion every four years in the middle of the summer in which you end up following sports you've often never heard of let alone ever sat down to competently watch, saw me stumble across the young American girl's team doing all sorts of gymnastic activity and doing them really rather well. The situation saw really rather young, and one would assume completely naive to what life can through at you; bleary eyed gymnasts in a group of about six or seven dwarfed by this huge China-set gymnastics auditorium full of roaring crowds, proceeding to follow through with a number of quite frightening procedures ranging from bars to vaults to all sorts. Their feats matched those of the host nation's entrants, and a battle for the gold medal was certainly unfolding; the experience of these youngsters travelling to Beijing, in China, with all the Communist or political turmoil that in itself carries, must have been an experience in itself. This, as the pressure that is on them anyway must have all combined in a flurry of emotions and personal feelings.So a film about American gymnastics competing, having to hone their ability and supposedly going through this coming-of-age-come-realisation of life transition might be more interesting if it were about those journeying half way across the world to compete such as in the scenario above. We don't get this with Stick It; instead, we get a tired and eerily fetishistic formula piece in which Missy Peregrym's Haley Graham is the star of a tale about a washed-out rebellious girl whose fondness for gymnastics threatens to re-emerge after she's busted for damage of private property. We know Haley is a bit of a rebel, as she wears a Ramones T-shirt, has a Sex Pistols poster sprawled over her bedroom wall and uses a few four letter words now and again. Since, she's rejected a seemingly warm and rewarding life of gymnastics for hanging out with shady types and engaging in illegal BMX activity instead, itself an item of physical performance; balance and show.In being caught after breaking some property during a BMX meeting, she must face going back to gymnastics and at the forefront of this is Jeff Bridges' tutor named Burt Vickerman. The film is the first from Jessica Bendinger, whose film is mostly just montages and loving compositions of various female gymnasts in tight leotards flexing, being massaged or getting out of ice baths in slow motion whilst dripping wet. When we aren't getting shots of how curvy Maddy Curley looks dressed as such, they're close ups of feet; all the while filtered through this bright, misguided palette of shades of red's, green's, blue's, yellow's and whites. At their first proper meeting with one another in a diner, Vickerman identifies Haley as a "rebel without a clause"; she sees him, in what is an odd self-reflective moment, as nothing more than a cliché and they sit opposite each another in what is an attempt at establishing degrees of conflict. The trouble is their banter plus general theme of there being a rivalry between 'student whom doesn't want to be there' and 'gruff tutor living off a past tragedy' is a little turgid. As is the on-off friendship with Joanne (Lengies), whom we despise not because she is the rival of our heroine but because it's as if she's stumbled into a gymnastics class on the way home from finishing last at a Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen-come-Hanna Montanna soundalike contest, and felt thoroughly downbeat in the process.As a team of Haley, Joanne and a few others of whom aren't important are forced into bonding, the team flit around the country competing in competitions which gives an array of companies the chance for some shocking product placement. The film instills some rather negative ideas into its intended young, female audience when Haley is bitterly disappointed to be initially left out of a squad and the idea that failure exists and is something we must all identify exists becomes apparent; this, before she burrows her way back in with a snazzy and flashy montage of an in-house squad playoff she instigates and the point is undermined. It's ridiculous, as is the film's further ramming down of our throat that Haley is an outcast in that when she arrives at the competition, something is spilt on her top and she must change into a different coloured tunic further still emphasising a difference between her and the team: she's an outcast, we get it. Move on.At the event is an odd staging of deliberate fouling to 'get one up' on the judges; essentially writer/director Bendinger giving the finger, through the girls in the film/the girls the film's made for, to any negative critical reception the film may garner. One additionally wonders why the paying audience reacted so lovingly to the persistent fouling, one wonders furthermore why crowds would come to a gymnastics event with cards ready to wave around on which '0.0' is displayed. A meek sub-plot linked to Joanne about whether she chooses young love and a trip to a prom over the girls and their championship match is a flimsy and dull inclusion; while the film as a whole is a limp and plodding affair, highly sexualised and tamely unfolded, the likes of which was not made for me and ought not really be seen by those it was intended for.