South Korean film “Victory” cheerfully and exuberantly dances and jumps around a number of familiar genre elements, and, what do you know, I liked it more than expected. While it will surely remind you of a bunch of similar films such as “Bring It On” (2000), the movie has enough charm and spirit to throw its story and characters high up in the air, and you will cheer and root for its young cheerleader characters while willingly overlooking a number of conventional aspects.

Set in one seaside industrial town in 1999, the movie opens with two female high school students showing off their considerable dancing skill in front of their schoolmates. They are Pil-seon (Lee Hyeri) and Mi-na (Park Se-wan), and they have hoped for succeeding as professional dancers in Seoul someday, but, to their frustration, their high school does not have a dance club where they can horn their dancing skill more.

And then there comes a good opportunity for them on one day. As the soccer team of their school has been struggling a lot during last several months, the principal recently recruits one talented player from Seoul, but it looks like the teams needs more help, and that is when Pil-seon and Mi-na suggest a possibly good idea to the principal. They convince him that the soccer team needs a group of cheerleaders, and they soon embark on establishing a cheerleading club even though they do not know anything about cheerleading from the beginning.

Fortunately, there is actually someone who can help them. She is Se-hyeon (Jo Aram), who is incidentally the younger sister of that talented soccer player. Although the first encounter between them and Se-hyeon is rather tense, they manage to persuade Se-hyeon to join their cheerleading club, and that is followed by a humorous sequence where these three girls attempt an audition for selecting any other girl good enough to dance along with them. Although many of those candidates are not so promising to say the least, they eventually come to choose six different girls who may get a bit better via the upcoming practice sessions.

As these girls try to train together, the screenplay by director Park Beom-soo, who previously directed “Single in Seoul” (2003), and his co-writers Kang Min-sun and Park Sung-hoon, hops from one conventional moment to another. Yes, their first public performance is a bit disastrous, but, of course, the girls come to move on as training and performing together day by day, and we are naturally served with a mandatory feel-good montage sequence where they gradually get better with more skill and experience.

However, the movie also does not overlook the glum reality surrounding them, which is mainly represented by Pil-seon’s working-class father. Like numerous other people in the town, Pil-seon’s father has devoted himself to his big shipbuilding company for many years, but he becomes quite conflicted when most of his fellow employees decide to protest about their harsh and unfair work environment. He surely knows that something must be done, but he only comes to hesitate more as a passive pushover who is easily bullied by his uncaring supervisor, and that certainly lets down his daughter at one point later in the story.

Things accordingly become melodramatic after that narrative point, and that is where the movie comes to lose some of narrative momentum, but it thankfully keeps things rolling as buoyed by the sincere relationship drama among Pil-seon and her fellow cheerleaders. Yes, there inevitably comes a point where they clash with each other in one way or another, but they are reminded again of the importance of friendship in the end, and they surely do not disappoint their schoolmates and teachers at all when they really need to galvanize their soccer team more than ever (Is this a spoiler?).

It surely helps that the main cast members of the film generate enough chemistry among themselves on the screen. While Lee Hyeri and Jo Aram are surely the standout in the bunch, Park Se-wan and several other cast members also did a good job of bringing enough life and personality to the group, and, above all, they all look believable during several cheerleading scenes in the film. I have no idea on how much they actually performed in these fabulous scenes, but the result looks mostly flawless as far as I can see, and the movie also effectively utilizes a number of notable hit songs from its period background.

In case of a number of other supporting performers in the film, they dutifully fill their roles while occasionally providing some extra humor or gravitas to the story. While Lee Jung-ha is hilarious as the rather clumsy goalkeeper who has carried a torch for Pil-seon since they were very young, Hyun Bong-sik has his own small moment to shine as Pil-seon’s soft-hearted father, and Joo Jin-mo has a little fun as the stern principal who turns out to be more caring than expected.

In conclusion, “Victory” is thoroughly conventional but fairly entertaining thanks to its ample amount of wit, energy, and heart, and I also appreciate some nice period details which made me feel a bit nostalgic for good reasons (Yes, I was around their age in 1999). Although it did not surprise me much, the movie really made me feel good after it was over, and that is enough for recommendation in my inconsequential opinion.