how retro!

Here at PPO we don't have much of a chance to see our bad movies in their full glory, but when my cable got installed, I was given two free weeks of HBO and Cinemax-- thank goodness! Today we'll be catching a sure gem-- and 1984 flick called Gimmie an 'F.' Sounds tremendous, eh? It gets better. If you couldn't tell from the implied title, there's a cheerleading camp that that has a Meatballs-esque junk team that has to beat the team that everyone knows is flawless already. How will they do it?! With hard work and determination? Probably not. More than likely it'll be fart jokes, pranks, and sex.

Our movie opened with the camp secretary, Mrs. Lipschitz, getting crap from her boss because the cheerleading instructors for Camp Beaver View are missing in action-- and the action involved booze underwear, and a motel. The cheerleaders all get into the orientation mode and the instructors show up just in time-- PHEW! Hey-- the guy in charge just talked about a world full of terrorism and this was from 1984. I guess some things don't change, eh? Damn terrorists...

I wanna let you know that I'm really not even trying to get the names of the instructors, which is really not going to make this easy for you, the reader. If I say the easy chick in the skirt with blonde hair, you'll have half the cast. One concern I have is how they got so many underage girls to be extras in this movie. I mean obviously you need parent's permission, right? And this was in the 80's-- when some parents still liked their kids. To let your kid be in a movie called Gimmie an 'F,' which is obviously lush with sexual connotations and probably a fair amount of naked ladies.

So there was just a ten minute scene that introduced the instructors. That was insanely ridiculous because the music was atrocious and the acting was horrid. Let's be honest though-- the acting's gonna suck. We have four or five female instructors and two males. I'm convinced by now that-- OH jeeze! The head guy says that the one dude cheerleader confuses sex with cheerleading, but the male cheerleader says that crowds go crazy when a team scores because the cheerleaders jiggle, not the actual score. That was more gently put in my words, but either way it was inappropriate. The head guy is named Bucky. Tommy Hamilton is the male cheerleader I mentioned before. I'm convinced he's gay, but since he's one of two guys at Camp Beaver View he probably isn't. Still, if you could've seen his face when he jumped into the arms of the other male cheerleader, you'd be suspicious too. To each his own I guess though.

"Bucky's like the weatherman-- he's always wrong!" That was brutal line one of many I bet. The line came in response to our protagonist, cheerleading instructor and wannabe-adult, Tommy Hamilton. His whole internal, moral dilemma is that he has to grow up, but he can't do anything more than teach teenie boppers how to be teenie boppers. "It takes 34 muscles to frown and 17 to smile, c'mon..." Brutal line number two-- that I've captured.

Now we have a group of cheerleaders called the Lucky Ducks. They're the misfits who have now real talent or ability, but they'll have to do better, right? The Lucky Duck captain is a good catholic school girl who seems to have everything going wrong. Not only do the kids make fun of her for being awful, but she also won't smoke or drink, and she'd never have sex-- right? Listen up though, there's another group of cheerleaders called the Demons, who are the bad girls in camp. They suck too, I think, but they're not the worst. They're looking to take out the number one team, but who knows if that'll happen. On the first night the Demons run off the camp to a strip bar and they got in with no problems. That seems to be a recurring theme in 80's movies. Maybe that's why ID-checking is so rigid today. We have no one to blame but the kids who were our age years ago.

When it all goes down there's a bar fight with a cheerleader man and a big burly hick man. The male cheerleader runs away and saves the good girl, whose name is some combination of Mary and something else. They end up at someone's pool, somehow, and they make out. This makes our wannabe adult making out with a sixteen year old girl. Very adult, don't ya think? When the head guy, Bucky, finds out, it becomes a battle of good vs. evil: If the ducks don't beat the falcons by the last day of camp, then Tommy gets signed to another five years as an instructor. If they do, Tommy gets $10,000-- and that's in 1984's economy. That's like $3 billion on today's market!

Tommy also seems to have some relationship building with Mary whatever, but Tommy's main squeeze, Whogivesadamn, is getting upset because Tommy's screwing around on her. Tommy assures her that the $10,000 would be great to give them a head start on a new life. Next scene, Tommy's dancing in the shower for the cheerleader girls who are watching him through the wall. It's shameful really. This guy went on to star in a massive amount of terrible movies from Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde to Gone in 60 Seconds.

"Gimmie an 'F'" actually gets said when one cheerleader tried to get with an instructor, not Tommy though. We'll chalk that up to number three, okay? After doing his nudie dance for the girls, Mary whatever tries to surprise him by sitting in his bed naked, but with no real nudity. Tommy actually does the adult thing and throws a shirt on her and makes her do flips. He yells at her when she does bad.

INTERESTING NOTE-- the candy machine at the camp is the EXACT model that is still in Luksic Hall's basement... same picture on the front and all... Makes me cringe. They try to break into it, which proves to be impossible, another truth from Luksic.

Now wouldn't you know it-- the nudity comes in with the one dude I least expected-- Bucky, the head guy. Of course he's not getting naked, it's the new instructor on the block, who the other male cheerleader has the hots for-- kind of. It's strange. She is a Falcon, and he has the hots for a Falcon, but not her. Still, he's upset by the whole scene-- upset enough to know that he should pee into a balloon and throw it at them through a bra-slingshot. Classic, huh?

When all the antics are over we still have our final competition, which will pit our Ducks verses those bastard Falcons. Ya know how whenever they do this stuff they always have dummy groups that perform, but you know they have no real chance because you don't know anything about them-- they weren't valuable to the plot or anything. Well they got that here, and I'm no cheerleading judge, but those Viking sista's had soul!

This whole time, there was an obligatory 1980's cliche, the Asian businessmen, who were going to help keep the camp going, but their only stipulation was to have Tommy get in on that five year contract. I don't really know why I mentioned that here. It's pretty useless. But hey, Bring it On 1984 is coming to an end (I hope!) and the Falcons are cheering. Hey-- is it acceptable in cheerleading for a cheerleader to strip to underwear and a sports bra and do a solo? I thought it was a team sport, but fake, like with no defense or purpose. OH-- the head Falcon fell off the pyramid, which caused them all to fall, even those who were tons of feet away.

Now comes the ducks! They'll have to win. Their costumes or uniforms or whatever were sabotaged by Bucky, who did it, bear in mind, to keep Tommy under contract when they lose. The girls use stage props, is that another part of cheerleading I missed? I never know really. Anyway, the Demons gave their costumes over, both being 'D's and all. So the end result is Catholic school girls running around in flaming black and red costumes and our lead chick doing a flippy combination thing that gets a ton of cheers. La de doo da. Wow. Who knew it could happen, eh? I did.

Anyway, they win, the Asian businessmen back Tommy in his own camp, and the head guy ends up all wet. Ha-- that's so much funnier if you watch the ending. Sooooo much funnier.

Ok, that was really just boring in the end. I paid attention only for you. And for those of you who think that the nudity label is a favor to me, you're wrong. There was really nothing that went down in this mess. You're welcome though. And thank you free cable for wasting about 2 hours of my life.