DVD Review: The Cheetah Girls - One World (Extended Music Edition)
Whelp, I just finished watching another musical. My wife is a big fan of them, while I enjoy them on occasion. This one was called The Cheetah Girls - One World, which neither of us had heard of before. However, after watching it, we both agreed that it was just plain awful. The story was bland, the acting was stale, the music was forgettable, and the lip-syncing was atrocious. The only thing that was kinda decent was the dancing.
The three girls in the movie make reference to a fourth member of the group who is MIA, which led me to believe this movie was probably based on a television series, and one of the girls had just had enough. The other three girls are still desiring to make it big as singing and dancing girl group known as The Cheetah Girls. I say singing, but there is no singing here, it's all very obvious lip-syncing. Allow me to explain a bit further....
First off, the voices that are being played back just don't sound like they match the three girls we see on sceen. Did they really sing those songs, or is this a Milli Vanilli switch? Or it could just be the uber-processing of the voices... they sound so manipulated that I doubt they'd sound natural coming out of anyone. And then there is the extreme overacting of the lips, nobody movies the mouths THAT much for anything other than exaggeration. Once these musical lip-syncing numbers really pull you out of the movie (assuming you were into the movie in the first place).
The story finds the three girls heading to India to star in some Bollywood movie, but when they get there they learn that only one of them can star in the movie. Being best friends they refuse to compete against each other, until they talk and decide to compete against each other. But they'll stay friends no matter what... yeah, right. Oh yeah, and one of their rules on this trip to India is NO BOYS. Guess how that turns out....
Well you don't have to guess, 'cause I'm gonna tell ya! One of the girls falls for the handsome young director, another one of the girls coincidentally meets the phone tech support guy that she had somehow got a crush on, and the third girl was seen dancing with the handsome young star of the show. Okay, I just gotta say it... what the hell! This girl gets a crush on a guy who helped her with tech support over the phone, and then they just both happen to find themselves standing only feet apart while talking on the cell phone?! If this movie had any plausibility to begin with, this just threw it all out the window. But whatever.
Blah, blah, blah, the girls hate each other and then become best friends and everything works out. Big whoop, who even cares. Maybe little kids? I can't imagine anyone else watching this film and afterwards saying boy I'm glad I watched that. Bonus features include some not-very-funny bloopers, a few music videos, the ability to jump to the musical portions of the movie, and then something called "Backstage Disney - Cheetah Spots". This is the movie, but with pop-up information boxes, interviews, and behind-the-scenes stuff interlaced into it. Kind of an interesting concept that I wouldn't mind seeing on DVDs with better movies. Anyway, personally, I'd pass on this one.
