Stick It

The New York Times Nathan Lee

A spry teenage comedy that gets everything right, Stick It takes the usual batch of underdogs, dirt bags, mean girls and bimbos and sends them somersaulting through happy clichés and unexpected invention.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

A sports empowerment fantasy of the best kind.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

Other than flubbing the dismount, Stick It is smarter and funnier than it has any right to be.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub

Much of the honest dialogue has the same feel as John Hughes' and Cameron Crowe's movies during their best years, while there's a half-serious hipness that recalls the first eight episodes of "The O.C."

Entertainment Weekly Scott Brown

A deliriously, defiantly unfocused headrush, Stick It is primarily an exercise in exercise.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Subversively funny, Stick It sees gymnastics as a microcosm of teen life.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Peregrym's performance as fiery, troubled teen Haley Graham is a triumph of charisma over technique.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Bendinger pulls out all the stops visually, using bold set design, frantic editing, extreme angles and computer image multiplying that turns what begins as a Busby Berkeley exercise in synchronized movement into a kaleidoscopic infinity of handsprings and back flips.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Despite the familiar story arc and MTV visuals, Bendinger puts this across with a certain amount of pizzazz, and the competitive gymnastics are often spectacular.

The Hollywood Reporter Frank Scheck

Spends an inordinate amount of time ogling the tight, lithe bodies of its young female characters. Thus, what might have appealed only to teen girls might well have crossover appeal to leering young boys as well.

Variety Robert Koehler

Bridges gives the movie its only genuine pulse as a gym coach known for his hard and manipulative ways.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Stick It uses the story of a gymnast's comeback attempt as a backdrop for overwrought visual effects, music videos, sitcom dialogue and general pandering. The movie seems to fear that if it pauses long enough to actually be about gymnastics, the audience will grow restless.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Peregrym is like a secondhand Hilary Swank. She has a looser presence and might be a better actor, but since we already have Swank, finding out is not a priority.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Bridges actually does a fine job in an uninteresting role. But this chick flick is all about the attitudinal teenagers.

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

The final meet felt eternal to me, but little girls may love it all, and even if they don't, they're almost sure to practice their handstands when they get home.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

So along with being fake punk-rock, Stick It is also a fake protest movie. That leaves the only traces of genuineness to Bridges, who plays the coach with a fatherly patience that earns him a paycheck, but not the better film he deserves.

Chicago Tribune Jessica Reaves

Stick It reels from its own frenetic pace. The music is loud, the camera cuts are incessant and everything seems geared toward distracting us from what's going on onscreen. Which is not much.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Like "Bring It On," Stick It is so much better than most of its insipid teen-movie peers yet like her earlier movie, Bendinger's new one is also not all it might be.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Peregrym is a fresh-faced beauty and Bridges is enjoyably cranky, but the film is as bland as an Afterschool Special.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jason Anderson

Even though William Safire doesn't fit in the target demographic, Stick It is more valuable as a survey of modern American teen argot than as a movie.

Film Threat Felix Vasques Jr.

Another rah rah girl power film, is your formula sports film.

Empire Simon Braund

The script fights well against the cliche-ridden plot but this is very average all round.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust

The film strives for some type of a girl-empowerment message that equates trading one type of conformity for another with self-determination but muffs the dismount and stumbles on the landing. In other words, it fails to Stick It.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Instead of gold-medal-winning, last-minute heroics, the movie weirdly becomes about the scandal of arbitrary gymnastics judges. Is it a movie or an episode of "Real Sports"? It veers into fresh territory but not dramatically satisfying territory.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Rarely is a sports movie so inept that it can't even make its central figure likable.