Lifetime Review: 'The Wrong Cheer Captain'

Kate Taylor (Alexis Samone) wasn't surprised when her best friend Emma Rogers (Claire Tablizo) was chosen to be captain of their school's cheer team. A motivated and friendly cheerleader, Emma would've been the perfect person to lead the team. What does come as a surprise is when a pool party ends with Emma being found dead. When it's revealed that Emma died of an overdose, the police and Kate's mother Carol (Vivica A. Fox) come to believe Emma either took the drugs herself or had them slipped in her drink by her boyfriend Shane (Noah Fearnley). But Kate knows her friends and she knows the truth: Emma was murdered.

Not only that, but Kate is also certain she knows who did it: Anna Barton (Sofia Masson). A new transfer student to Pine Hills High, Anna was noticeably upset about Emma getting named cheer captain over her. But now that Emma's dead, the title is all Anna's. Convinced Anna is responsible for killing her best friend, Kate teams up with Shane to find the proof they need to bring Anna to justice. Is Kate's grief blinding her to reality--or is Anna truly willing to kill to be cheer captain?

After the heinous disaster that was Pom Poms and Payback, I was a little nervous about moving on to The Wrong Cheer Captain--Fear the Cheer 2021's requisite "Wrong" feature. The two films even share a bit in common, with both focusing largely on a teenage girl investigating someone at their school they suspect is guilty of criminal activity. But unlike the previously released schlock, The Wrong Cheer Captain works in all the key areas: good performances, compelling characters, and well-paced action. While there are problems, they're not as numerous as the ones in Pom Poms and Payback and none of them are of the movie-breaking variety. It's the ideal palate cleanser for those who agree with me about Pom Poms and Payback being an unappetizing addition to Lifetime's cheerleader movie menu.

With the plot being a standard high school murder mystery, acting and character writing is what gives The Wrong Cheer Captain its spice. Playing a fiercely determined young woman, Alexis Samone will quickly have you rooting for Kate Taylor as she fights for what's right. Not only does she work hard to prove Anna's guilt, but she also vehemently defends both Emma's memory and Shane's reputation. While Kate has her bad moments when she becomes unnecessarily hostile towards others, she's otherwise a great protagonist and Samone makes it easy to stay in Kate's corner. It helps that we get a glimpse of Kate's relationship with Emma and Shane before the former's untimely demise. Samone shares solid friendship chemistry with Claire Tablizo and Noah Fearnley, with both being just as good as individuals. Fearnley makes Shane nothing short of adorable while Tablizo is equally sweet as the shy and humble Emma. While her aversion to Anna's suggestion of being co-captains is a bit strange and doesn't really jive with her characterization, it doesn't make Emma's death any less undeserved and sad.

The only positive thing about Emma's passing is that it makes way to the awesome dynamic between Kate and Shane, which carries a lot of The Wrong Cheer Captain. Apart from his slightly bizarre depiction of Shane's reaction to finding Emma's body, Fearnley meshes well with Samone in terms of acting. The friendship Shane and Kate maintain before and especially after Emma's death is wonderful to watch unfold. Both act as shoulders of support for each other, with Shane aiding Kate in her mission to get justice for Emma and Kate defending Shane's innocence as he faces accusations of being involved in Emma's "overdose." They have their hiccups, as some of Kate's aforementioned moments of unnecessary hostility are directed at Shane for (in her mind) not taking their investigation seriously enough. But for the most part, they make the perfect pair of platonic teen detectives to follow for an hour and 25 minutes.

A less appealing character to follow through The Wrong Cheer Captain is Carol Taylor, Kate's mother and the film's obligatory Vivica A. Fox character. When Carol's immediate reaction to Emma's death was to use it as an opportunity to lecture her grieving daughter, I had the feeling she was only going to get worse from there. As it turns out, I was right. Not only does Carol continue to disregard the fact that Kate just lost her best friend, but she also inexplicably buys into the nasty rumors about Emma and Shane and tries to forbid Kate from hanging out with the latter. While it's awesome to watch Kate stand up for herself and her friends and Fox does do a good job of playing a loathsomely insensitive mother, it never feels like Carol develops out of her toxic behavior. It's ironic that Fox also played a mother named Carol in 2019's The Wrong Tutor. Both characters go through a similarly disjointed arc: they start out unpleasant and inconsiderate of their child's feelings, have a brief sympathetic moment of emotional vulnerability, and then end the movie going right back to being awful. While this Carol at least softens up a little before the credits roll, her sympathetic spell is much briefer and doesn't have the same impact as the one from The Wrong Tutor.

Two other hyper-accusatory characters in this movie are Jackée Harry's Principal Simpson and Shellie Sterling's Detective Page. It's a shame that Sterling's first Wrong role outside of the Keeping Up With the Joneses saga has to be that of a typically clueless Lifetime cop. At least neither character is in the movie enough to get as irritating as Carol and Principal Simpson gets a strong introductory scene of reminding Anna about her sketchy past and warning her not to cause any trouble at her school. Acting as a reasonable counterpart to Carol and Principal Simpson is Chelsea Gilson's Coach Johnson. While a somewhat stern no-nonsense coach, Johnson is very much compassionate towards the girls on her squad and isn't as susceptible to conclusion jumping as the other adults of the film. Gilson gives a solid performance as the level-headed coach, even during the repetitively shot/framed scenes of her addressing the cheer team. In other substantial adult roles, Marc Herrmann and Meredith Thomas both provide serviceable cameos as wrongfully accused teacher Eric Olsen and Mrs. Jacobs, an expository character with a substantial tie to Anna Barton's dark past.

(Sidenote: in addition to those repetitively filmed scenes of Coach Johnson, there's also a few scattered instances of weird camerawork throughout The Wrong Cheer Captain.)

Speaking of Anna, Sofia Masson makes a good first impression in her (according to IMDB) first film role as a psychotically ambitious cheerleader. While Anna Barton's motivation and backstory are both familiar Lifetime beats, Masson plays them in a more lowkey fashion than other actors might have. It's not until the final act that Anna becomes a full-on lunatic, and even then, Masson keeps her more restrained than characters like Skylar Madison or Lexi Cooper. Through many of Anna's scenes of veiled insanity, Masson drops hints to Anna's troubled upbringing and how the trauma of it affected her. The movie doesn't use that trauma to excuse Anna's actions, but at the same time, Masson's portrayal of Anna's psychosis is sure to have you feeling at least a few pangs of empathy.

SPOILER ALERT Unfortunately, Anna Barton doesn't go out on the high note she deserved. After a super cliché villain line, Anna gets into a very lackluster and all too brief final battle with Kate. After the catfight Kate and Anna had right before the conclusion, I was expecting a grander knock-down, drag-out brawl between the girls for their last confrontation. At least the movie receives a better wrap-up than the one for the Wrong series' previous cheerleader movie. While it initially appears that Anna is going to make an improbable escape, the epilogue reveals Anna's satisfying true fate. Spoilers Over

As I said before, the plot for this film isn't anything special for Lifetime. But while it may not reinvent the pom-pom, The Wrong Cheer Captain still works thanks to its dedicated cast and lovable protagonists. With all the harsh backlash they face after Emma's death, you'll definitely be rooting for Kate and Shane to find the truth and prove everyone wrong. The fresh-faced actors portraying the main teen characters of The Wrong Cheer Captain play well off their Lifetime veteran co-stars and blow right past the cast of the previous Fear the Cheer 2021 movie performance-wise. So if Pom Poms and Payback left you down in the dumps, The Wrong Cheer Captain has all the energy needed to bring back your Lifetimey spirit.

Score: 7 out of 10 Kansas City steaks.