The Movie

I'm telling you, you can just smell the agents, managers, publicists, marketing execs, and merchandisers just steaming in the background, like some proverbial turds lying in a snow bank, drooling and hyperventilating at the prospect of merging market-researched data with a cadre of available would-be talents, a diamond-level example of corporate synergy if there ever was one.

Certainly, I am not quite the target audience The Cheetah Girls is aiming for, which apparently is that area of "tween" girls, somewhere between the ages of 7 and 12. I'm off by a Y-chromosome and 20-plus years, which makes this Disney Channel made-for-TV film so out of my range, I might as well be slipping on my lime-green pants, painting my bald-spot, and heading on down to Scoogins for the early-bird. The film is ostensibly about a group of four New York teenage girls, the exotically-named Galleria (Raven), Chanel (Adrienne Bailon), Aqua (Kiely Williams), and Doe (Sabrina Bryan), who collectively form the singing-sensation The Cheetah Girls, as they try to get they grubby little mitts on the elusive record contract which they most desperately crave. Right off the bat, each girl is given a character background with the depth of a thimble. Galleria is the bi-racial leader of the group, whose dreams of stardom often supercede her responsibilities, Chanel is the feisty Latina with the fashion sense, Doe is, comparatively, the bland one of the group, the acrobatic foster-kid, and Aqua is the sassy, pampered black Southern girl.

Sure, anyone expecting depth and richly delineated character studies in a piece of fluff like The Cheetah Girls is only fooling themselves, be these four are caricatures, not characters, which is fine if your final goal is to sell DVDs and CDs, and float some half-assed singles on Disney Radio and broadcast some completely-assed TV movies on the Disney Channel. So I suppose, The Cheetah Girls succeeds on that level.

From the text on the back of the DVD case:

Packed with hot songs and cool moves, these darling divas steal the show in this hit Disney Channel movie.

Pardon me from injecting a bit of logic into this, but... who exactly are they stealing the show from? That frickin' poodle? It's their movie!

The "hot songs" are that same kind of bland, mass-produced and corporate-sponsored pop we've seen and heard time and time again, with little to distinguish itself from Generic Radio Pap. The "cool moves" are more of the same, engagingly danced but over-choreographed, strict and lifeless when they probably should have been bouncy and spontaneous. The girls in the film are bubbly and engaging presences, and clearly they demonstrate enough talent to indicate they'd be better off in something other than this forgettable piece of drivel.

The DVD

Video:

The Cheetah Girls is presented in its full-frame, made-for-television aspect ratio of 1.33:1. The overall quality of the video is fine, although not quite as sharp and vibrant as it should have been. Image detail is satisfactory if not quite razor-sharp, and some scenes look noticeably soft. Colors are acceptable although occasionally a bit muted, and there is a smidgeon of compression noise and shimmering visible throughout the transfer. Otherwise, the film looks generally fine, certainly better than TV quality although not quite a rousing success.

Audio: