From the producers of “Bring It On” comes “Stick It!”, a film that reminds viewers its not called Gym-nice-tics. Haley Graham is a rebellious 17-year-old who has a run-in with the law when and is forced by a judge to return to the regimented world of competitive gymnastics, a world she was cast out of after causing Team USA to lose by walking out of an event. In this “Varsity Blues”-esque teen drama, the power-to-the-proletariat gymnasts unionize to take on the dictatorship of the judges, but with the hated coach of Jon Voight replaced with a much more loveable character portrayed by The Dude himself.

Ed: I don’t think you watched the right film

CC: …. what? They made a sequel? In 2001? How, the movie didn’t come out until 2006?

Ed: *sigh*

Ok folks, after that false start, here we are 55 minutes later. Slackjaw is an iconic name in Brit climbing films, and Stick It! might be one of their earliest iconic entries, dropping in 2001, and apparently has nothing to do with teen gymnastics.

This film is typical of its era in a lot of ways. Its sponsored by Pusher (what film wasn’t?), its got a vague electronic soundtrack half the time, and there’s no overall storyline or plot to speak of. And none of that is a bad thing – its just wall to wall sending, all across the UK, with boulders at over a dozen crags, and easily a boulder a minute for its nearly one hour run. Excitingly, climbs shown span from into the low 6s all the way to 8B+, or V3ish to V14 for those that don’t speak Font. Considering that may have been the highest grade in the world at the time, thats a big deal.

Equally interesting to me is the cast of climbers, while the UK climbing scene in 2001 wasn’t the picture of diversity, this film doesn’t just glom on to the rockstars, but has nearly two dozen named climbers throughout. What rockstars, you ask? Oh you know, just folks like Dave McLeod, Jerry Moffatt, Malcolm Smith, Ben Moon, and John Gaskins.

This film isnt perfect, but it is both a love letter to UK bouldering and a time capsule of sorts. If you’ve ever wondered where the cliché of climbers wearing beanies originated, I’d argue this film might be the genesis. People send gnarly stuff with only a single pad in sight, if you can believe it. There are unfortunate parts of this film however, some of which are just part of the UK scene, and some that are in the edit. Drop off boulders abound, and those always lose points for me. The problem names flash by unreadably at times, but this maybe have been fixed in the DVD re-release (rocking the VHS here at Crank). While its the hardest thing shown on film, Gaskins’ Anaesthesia is a wicked hard but also wicked uninspiring looking traverse. The choice to end the film on Ben Moon chuffing repeatedly on a boulder characterized by desperate arete-humping came as a surprise as well, after having started off with a bang – Moffatt doing the IFSC worthy bump-catch of The Ace.

Verdict: Watch It! I know it’s not perfect, but there are plenty of laughs, more boulders than I can count, and big names that you don’t often get to see pulling hard. I’m a sucker for the nostalgic stuff, and this checks the boxes for sure.

The Who and What:

Things flew by in the film, but SlackJaw was good enough to document them all here on thier site. One day I may transcribe them all here, but today is not that day.