Reasons the Bring It On! Musical was great:

Starts off like a traditional, boring HS cheerleading story. Shifts gear almost immediately to a cool, mostly non-condescending fish-out-of-water story. The weird frumpy overweight girl is like the 3rd biggest character, starts dating someone who loves her, sings a song about learning to love herself and is embraced for her unique style. Not accept herself, LOVE herself. That character never undergoes a ‘makeover’ and wears the cool dude outfit in their final routine instead of a skirt. The two main characters are women, and it passes the Bechdel test in the first scene. Another main character (who got the biggest cheers of the night) was a trans woman of color whose gender identity is NEVER played for a cheap joke and who shares a kiss with one of the white male leads at the end of show that is probably the sweetest and most romantic moment of the show. This character kind of blew my mind you guys. I teared up a couple times–she sings the 'love yourself’ song with #2, so yeah, tears. It’s ultimately about friendship. Please go back to #5. and read it again. Good, like, jumps and cheerleading moves and shit. The villain is sings the only cheesy song about going after your dreams (replete with sparkly unicorn imagery). Nearly half the cast was comprised of people of color, in a way that felt (to my privileged asshole anyway) really substantive and not token-y. Good singing and stuff. Dancing! The main character was driven and nerdy and didn’t really need or even want a boyfriend, she just wanted to be special and to be good at something. That’s a pretty fucking great lesson. A bunch of cool jumps and tricks too.

Overall the show was smart and funny (overall), and like… pretty impressive! The audience fucking loved it, and there were a lot of amazing elements in there that it was… satisfying to see a bunch of old white people and tweens go batshit bananas over. Again, the trans character (whose name was La Cienega, I mean COME ON so great), got the BIGGEST applause and cheers of the entire cast. Love it.

The jokes were pretty much all terrible (I laughed once), but everyone else was enjoying them so I guess I’m just a sourfacebutterbutt. I’d recommend the show though, especially if your cousin’s rich grandma buys tickets for your cousin and her friend and then her friend can’t go at the last minute and your aunt calls you and you go instead, and also you get upgraded to center orchestra and the old crime scene tech from Law & Order: SVU sits in the row behind you the whole time and it’s like a bummer cause his character got murdered a couple seasons ago. Okay goodnight.