Aw, Hilary Duff. How much older and less inspirational you’ve become since your Cadet Kelly days.
Cadet Kelly lost to Smart House, but it was a difficult decision for many. Read our postmortem ode to Hilary Duff’s antics. Vote for the final round, Smart House vs. Zenon on the main Disney Channel Original Madness page.
Cadet Kelly
Cadet Kelly was feminism before our generation knew how to pronounce the word “feminism.”
Think about its revolutionary message: a girl’s success story told in the context of military school – a commonly male-dominated institution – translating to the ultimate “anything you can do, we can do better” sentiment. Cadet Kelly proved to everyone the power of creativity, perseverance and kindness, but mostly validated the belief that girls were awesome and would always be awesome.
Quick recap for anyone deprived of this film’s greatness: Free-spirited Kelly (Hilary Duff, Lizzie McGuire) loves her life at her artsy school, but everything changes when her mother marries the uptight commandant of a military school, where Kelly gets enrolled. Kelly isn’t used to being bossed around, and finds it difficult when Cadet Captain Jennifer Stone (Christy Carlson Romano, Kim Possible and Even Stevens) gives her orders. After Stone is mean to Kelly and Kelly gets back at Stone, Kelly is punished by having to maintain the drill team’s uniforms. That’s where she starts to become interested in drill and, with practice, she tries out for and makes the team. She works with Stone to complete a great routine but on the day of the big competition, she gets word that her dad is in trouble. Using her skills learned at military school and her new attitude, she manages to save her father and shine for her team.
The film has a star-studded cast dripping with girl power. At its release, Duff was right in the peak of Lizzie McGuire and a figure idolized by every adolescent girl. Her counterpart in the film is Christy Carlson Romano, who was arguably the most successful Disney Channel female ever – while making Cadet Kelly, she was simultaneously working on Even Stevens and voicing the title character in Kim Possible. Legendary. There were some girls who had an undying love for the Duff-Romano dream team. I may or may not have been one of them.
The film had star power because the message was filtered in at that prime early age. Most people on campus today were between 8 and 12 years old when the movie was released in 2002, meaning those poignant scenes with Duff squirming her way through the obstacle course or nailing the final dance routine replayed in those young minds again and again, branding the message of girl power to the max.
Cadet Kelly was also a movie screaming American ideals released just six months after the 9/11 attacks. Many of us were too young to understand the depth of the issues, but the movie reinforced the pride, patriotism and undying loyalty toward the military in a time of confusion.
Watching the final drill routine in the film still gives me slight goosebumps; I remember worshiping the sequence when I was younger. Now that I look back on it, I see that Romano and Duff aren’t always completely in sync, and it’s probably a misrepresentation of military school life. But for the comfort and the entertainment the movie brought me, I only have one response: You go, girls.
–Beena Raghavendran
