Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
A four-member teen girl group named the Cheetah Girls go to a Manhattan High School for the Performing Arts and try to become the first freshmen to win the talent show in the school's history. During the talent show auditions, they meet a big-time producer named Jackal Johnson, who tries to make the group into superstars, but the girls run into many problems.
The Cheetah Girls is a serviceable Disney Channel TV movie built on a familiar underdog/girl-group formula drawn from its YA source material. The plot hits predictable beats—friendship tension, shady music industry figure, talent show climax—without much surprise. Acting is competent for a Disney Channel production but unremarkable overall, with Raven-Symoné being the standout. Cinematography is standard TV-movie fare with little visual ambition. Novelty is limited; while the multicultural girl-group angle and Cheetah aesthetic give it mild personality, the narrative template is recycled. The ending delivers a reasonably satisfying message about artistic integrity over commercial compromise, elevating it slightly above the rest of the film.