The Cheetah Girls (2003) Reviews

• An unrealistic and horrible influence on today's children. SPOILERS

  kasicookies2006-04-04

  Having a curiosity in the entertainment that kids and teens are being given today, I happened to watch this film on TV a few days ago. I could be biased and say that movies aren't what they use to be for kids, but this movie went beyond that. This film is a depressing example of how horribly some of today's youth is growing up. I would NOT recommend this film in anyway (unless for laughs at its stupidity). The film starts off with our four 'rich girl' characters strutting down the street with arrogance beyond words. The arrogance, perhaps a normal thing for some teenagers. However, these girls do appear to be filthy rich of which very few kids could relate to leaving them to wonder why can't they be rich little kids too? The goal of these girls of course - To become famous pop-singers. An unrealistic dream for most but it seems to be a moral to the film: "to have a good life, you need to become famous". The plot moral, not a great one. The characters little lessons, appalling. 'Raven' is so caught up in the 'becoming a pop-star' experience that she becomes completely self-absorbed. This is probably one of the few morals that are presented well. Don't become a self-absorbed idiot. Moving on. Our second character fails entirely at bringing in any good ideals. After some time working on 'the cheetah girls' upcoming career she comes home to throw a tantrum about her mother not being there (rather, she's out with a boyfriend). The real-estate agent rings about her mother's interest in selling the house, the daughter picks up the phone, rudely yelling to the agent how this house is not for sale 'Because I say so' in pure teen angst. Now she decides to go out and abuse her mother's credit card for all the money it's worth because of this small episode. Of course when mum comes home, she is not happy. But apparently it's all OK when the daughter cries out about how her mother should be there more for her. Perhaps if this were a REAL case of child-neglect, this may be OK. But this kid was just a selfish brat who needs to find better ways to get over minor issues. I really hope kids won't think its OK to throw hissy fit next time they discover their parents had to go out. The next character is perhaps the most insulting to the 'real world'. Raven makes an occasional comment to this character about how trashy their fashion looks (and yes, their fashion looks perfectly fine actually). Later in the film we realise that our 'trashy' girl is actually an orphan living in a poor foster home. It's a good idea; however, this girl looks NOTHING like a real 'poor' girl. Perhaps a 'money isn't everything' moral would have fitted nicely here, but instead we're handed the perfect fix: Get your rich friends to buy your clothes. The forth character I won't comment on as I can't remember anything significant about her. The process of becoming pop-stars of course, is very unrealistic, aside the sell-out factor and the lip-syncing. 'The cheetah girls' are torn between following their original dream or selling-out just to get the exposure. Their friendship hangs on the line because of this as Raven refuses to compromise. We are given a few inspiring quotes from other characters about which road Raven should take on this matter, then its all up to the wonderful climax to do the rest. The climax. Toto has fallen in a hole and has got dirty (horrifying experience for a dog bearing a perly white coat) Poor Raven is so frantic, this is obviously the worst kind of tragedy that could happen in life. God forbid we learn anything realistic like the death of a family member or even of this poor little pooch. Perhaps in that case we'd even had the President of the United States turning up to comfort Raven, but no, it's just a dirty dog stuck in a hole, it only calls for the whole neighbourhood, police, fire fights and the local television news crew. Such a tragedy can only resolve in the reconciled friendship of 'the cheetah girls'. And there we have it. Entertainment... maybe. Any benefits otherwise, I would personally hope NOT, as they're not the kind of things I would like to see in kids and teenagers these days. Normally, If this film was aimed at a higher audience (ha) I wouldn't see as much of a problem with it. But this was a Disney film... you know, the ones that are meant to be inspiring to kids, or at least teach them some values in life? This just gave us an insight to Disney's own greedy mind.

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• why so hard on the cheetah girls?

  knucklekiss072009-07-20

  I've read some of the comments on the cheetah girls movie, and I'm surprised at how hard the ADULTS have been on this movie. I'm 16 now, but this movie came out when I was 9 or 10. And all this talk about how unrealistic it was, is STUPID. Of course it's gonna be silly and unrealistic, but this is a CHILD'S MOVIE. Disney caters to ages 6-14, although at that time not many teens watched it so it was probably around 6-11 at the time. I LOVED the movie, and so did all of my friends. We didn't see these girls as rich (nor did we care) as some people have claimed, we didn't sit there contemplating the roles of the characters, and we didn't even think that no one would care about Toto being stuck in a hole at the end, because to us at that age, that was a plausible reason for the police and firefighters to come. Unrealistic? Maybe. But we were KIDS. We cared about Toto and the girls' friendship. Fame wasn't the moral to us, friendship was, at least, that's what I got out of it. So before you rate this like it's an adult/teen lifetime/feature film, think about it from the standpoint of who it was made for, the kids.

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• rocks

  nygurl16872003-08-15

  This movie was the best movie Raven has done. It has a great message for teenage girls and guys who think they have a chance in the music business. The Cheetah Girls can sing and they can dance. That is the perfect thing that makes success.

• Began the fall of Disney channel...

  mussicmann422007-07-10

  Now, I don't comment on a lot of things. Especially not movies like this, but I'd like to say what I have to say. This movie is terrible...horrible acting, cheesy storyline, it was also confusing to understand. It was like a mess of scenes jumbled together in movie format. The songs are just...ugh...I don't even have a word for them. They don't really make sense, and obviously this movie is aimed at 6 year old girls. Whatever happened to the OLD Disney? Like Zoog? Sister Sister, Boy Meets World, Even Stevens, and the older D.C.O.M.S such as Brink!, Halloweentown, Johnny Tsunami, Quints, and many others. They need to bring back the good shows, and quit showing terrible movies like this.

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• There was nothing wrong with the movie

  horseluver5432006-11-09

  OK first off, all the rude comments was unnecessary. Second,if you guys can figure out that it's Disney Channel then there's a problem, and third the movie was made for kids, if you were expecting something better (like a movie for teens or adults) then go to the movies and see something for a more mature audience!!! I thought the movie was pretty good, of course i don't expect that much from Disney Channel, but in my own opinion it wasn't all that bad. Sure some of the scenes were kind of dumb and didn't make that much sense, but like I said before it was intended for kids to watch, kids don't catch on like more mature audiences do. I personally think that the second one was much better and made a lot of sense. Besides that I thought that the storyline was good, well at least the part where the show how the girls have a real passion for something. If you love something so much and have a passion for it and dream of going big then you should do whatever it takes to get there, and thats what the movie is mostly about. Which is great because it shows the viewer that if you really love something you can achieve it. The acting was OK, it could have been better. I thought that the singing was great (except for one of them, i don't like her voice and i still didn't in the second one). Since I love dancing I thought that the dancing was great too. Sabrina is very talented and shows even more of her talent in the second film. To me she was the most talented one. All in all it thought was movie was pretty good, could have been better but its Disney Channel and meant for kids so if you don't like it then why bother watching it?? Think about that one...

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