"Death of a Cheerleader" is a nice mixture of some universal themes: the desire to fit in, things not always being as they seem, the way societal pressures can cause people to act irrationally, putting people down can cause you to get put down yourself, etc. Several of these themes are present in every movie about teenagers and are portrayed in the same fashion here, but the interesting idea was how the themes of societal pressures and the conscience (the two most prevalent themes) were portrayed: through how one high school girl is driven to murder another and how the community reacts first to the murder and then, six months later, to the arrest of the murderer. However, I think the problem is that these two themes were too big for the movie to cover in the depth they deserved for its length.
Obviously, the film had its good points: Kellie Martin is excellent as always, managing to handle the extreme confusion and emotion of Angela Delvecchio as she struggles with her conscience; the robotic lack of emotion of Angela trying not to get caught by the police questioning her; and the confused, irrational, pent-up rage of Angela at Stacy's threat to "tell everyone in the school that [Angela was] really weird." The other characters are generally stock, especially Stacy Lockwood, the popular girl who is a complete jerk, and Monica, the angry outcast. In fact, the only other character who really has any depth is Jamie, the friend of Angela and cronie of Stacy who has to deal with the loss of one friend, the knowledge that the girl being targeted for her death is not responsible, and the changes in the personality of one other friend and eventually has to become the voice of reason in an over-materialistic, unrealistically demanding, overly pious, angry, close-knit town. Thus, the only other performance really needing judging is that of Marley Shelton. Her performance was not up to the bar that Martin set, but it was very good and who in the world would expect two 20-year-olds of Martin's talent? (There are really only about a half dozen actors in the world of her talent, so that is totally unrealistic.)
Still, Martin, like in her film "All You Need" (a better film, including Martin herself giving one of the finest performances I have ever seen by anyone), seems to be getting cut off from what one would expect to make her character and performance deeper and more complete. Dan Bronson doesn't let the character's development flow subtly, but that's probably because he had to leave room for the post-murder societal mockery. That mockery suffers from the same lack of flow, again probably caused just by time restrictions. Had this been a feature film, not needing to take into account commercials and live by a hard rule of two hours, I think it could have been a great film (and it wouldn't need to be more than about a half hour longer than this, I should think). However, as it is, the film isn't given the space in time that it needs to breathe completely.
My only comment on the direction is that it is unnoticeable. It did not strike me as extraordinarily good or bad, though I think more close-ups of Kellie Martin are always in order . . .
And, I have to question some of the casting decisions. From looking at them, how in the world would Tori Spelling become more popular than the unbelievably beautiful Kellie Martin? Actually, how in the world would she become more popular than Kathryn Morris (who, despite the generic outsider/ugly duckling dress is quite attractive)? She has no talents that we see, she's not a nice person, she's not particularly intelligent, in fact, there is no reason why she is popular, and that distresses me. Why couldn't they at least have cast someone who wasn't about equally as attractive as Danny DeVito? I don't expect them to find someone better looking that Kellie Martin (no such creature exists), but since they're not giving the character anything else, her beauty should be the reason for her popularity, and yet they don't even give her that.
Overall, "Death of a Cheerleader" is an all-too-common "near miss." It nearly hit on as a great movie, but instead just nicks the corner of the target and ends up a slightly-better-than-average movie. It really came close, but couldn't quite make it.
Obviously, the film had its good points: Kellie Martin is excellent as always, managing to handle the extreme confusion and emotion of Angela Delvecchio as she struggles with her conscience; the robotic lack of emotion of Angela trying not to get caught by the police questioning her; and the confused, irrational, pent-up rage of Angela at Stacy's threat to "tell everyone in the school that [Angela was] really weird." The other characters are generally stock, especially Stacy Lockwood, the popular girl who is a complete jerk, and Monica, the angry outcast. In fact, the only other character who really has any depth is Jamie, the friend of Angela and cronie of Stacy who has to deal with the loss of one friend, the knowledge that the girl being targeted for her death is not responsible, and the changes in the personality of one other friend and eventually has to become the voice of reason in an over-materialistic, unrealistically demanding, overly pious, angry, close-knit town. Thus, the only other performance really needing judging is that of Marley Shelton. Her performance was not up to the bar that Martin set, but it was very good and who in the world would expect two 20-year-olds of Martin's talent? (There are really only about a half dozen actors in the world of her talent, so that is totally unrealistic.)
Still, Martin, like in her film "All You Need" (a better film, including Martin herself giving one of the finest performances I have ever seen by anyone), seems to be getting cut off from what one would expect to make her character and performance deeper and more complete. Dan Bronson doesn't let the character's development flow subtly, but that's probably because he had to leave room for the post-murder societal mockery. That mockery suffers from the same lack of flow, again probably caused just by time restrictions. Had this been a feature film, not needing to take into account commercials and live by a hard rule of two hours, I think it could have been a great film (and it wouldn't need to be more than about a half hour longer than this, I should think). However, as it is, the film isn't given the space in time that it needs to breathe completely.
My only comment on the direction is that it is unnoticeable. It did not strike me as extraordinarily good or bad, though I think more close-ups of Kellie Martin are always in order . . .
And, I have to question some of the casting decisions. From looking at them, how in the world would Tori Spelling become more popular than the unbelievably beautiful Kellie Martin? Actually, how in the world would she become more popular than Kathryn Morris (who, despite the generic outsider/ugly duckling dress is quite attractive)? She has no talents that we see, she's not a nice person, she's not particularly intelligent, in fact, there is no reason why she is popular, and that distresses me. Why couldn't they at least have cast someone who wasn't about equally as attractive as Danny DeVito? I don't expect them to find someone better looking that Kellie Martin (no such creature exists), but since they're not giving the character anything else, her beauty should be the reason for her popularity, and yet they don't even give her that.
Overall, "Death of a Cheerleader" is an all-too-common "near miss." It nearly hit on as a great movie, but instead just nicks the corner of the target and ends up a slightly-better-than-average movie. It really came close, but couldn't quite make it.