Sugar & Spice

Directed by Francine McDougall, Sugar & Spice follows several cheerleaders, including Marley Shelton’s Diane Weston, Melissa George’s Cleo Miller, and Mena Suvari’s Kansas Hill, as they decide to rob a bank after one of their own falls on hard times. It’s an agreeably silly premise that’s employed to watchable (albeit forgettable) effect by McDougall, as the filmmaker, armed with Mandy Nelson’s screenplay, delivers a briskly-paced endeavor that benefits from its tongue-in-cheek narrative and raft of agreeable, appealing performances – with, in terms of the latter, the actors’ entertaining efforts going a long way towards smoothing over the film’s periodic bumps and lulls. (It doesn’t hurt, certainly, that the picture boasts top-notch work from charismatic periphery players like James Marsden, Sean Young, and W. Earl Brown.) And although it runs just 80 minutes, Sugar & Spice admittedly does suffer from an all-too-slight feel that ensures it peters out to a fairly palpable degree long before arriving at its padded-out conclusion – which does, in the end, cement the film’s place as a decent-enough time-waster that never quite wears out its welcome.

**1/2 out of ****