Kirsten Dunst vs. Reese Witherspoon
Battle of the Perky Co-Eds

From Shirley Temple to Patricia McCormack to Jodie Foster to the Olsen twins, the precocious little blonde girl is a revered film archetype. What could be more appealingly pure than the beaming face of a golden-tressed white girl -- unless it's the beaming face of a golden-tressed white girl as she lisps a deceptively sophisticated wisecrack to the likes of Steve Guttenberg.

Reese Witherspoon and Kirsten Dunst both started their careers as precocious little blonde girls, but they very quickly outgrew the limits of such a restrictive category. In the same year she was tugging at America's heartstrings playing the spoiled young Amy March in Little Women, Dunst also starred in Interview With the Vampire as Claudia, the precocious, bloodsucking child who, once sired by Brad Pitt's character, falls in love and briefly makes out with him. Witherspoon's film début, as a tomboy who falls in love with one of the London twins (does it really matter which one?), but a mere three years later she was starring opposite Stephen Dorff in a movie originally titled So Fucking What.

So edgy! So many risks, they take! And still, so pretty and blonde!

Dunst and Witherspoon are both past their high-school years now, but that doesn't stop them turning up in high school movies -- Witherspoon's most memorable being, of course, Pleasantville and Election. But Dunst is rather outstripping her, in this writer's opinion, in terms of the charm and humour of her recent high-school movie choices: Strike! (released in the U.S. as All I Wanna Do. It was a bit ragged but made up for that with heart, and -- in this writer's opinion -- by being shot and premiered in Canada); Drop Dead Gorgeous (in which she got to share many a delightful scene with the thespianic force commonly known as Allison "I got some!" Janney); Dick (in which she played a naïve but adorable '70s-era student held in thrall -- as who among us was not -- by Richard Nixon, and in which she uttered the deathless line, "French fries! French fries! Mmmmm!"). Then there was this past summer's Bring It On -- or, as this writer likes to call it, "the greatest movie of all time." That sound you heard when Dunst's Torrance screeched at Eliza Dushku's Missy that they were going to throw down was the the deflating balloon of Reese Witherspoon's hope of playing another high schooler. We all loved Tracey Flick, but her paranoid indignation at the destruction of her campaign posters had none of the appeal of Kirsten's WASPy threats of violence against Faith.

The greatest movie of all time aside, both perky co-eds have balanced their perky co-ed roles with more daring material. First, there's Dunst's subtle and stunning performance in The Virgin Suicides as Lux Lisbon. Rebelling against her repressive parents by offering her body and heart to any of the neighbourhood boys who'd take it, Lux is clever, sexy, and bereft, often in the same scene. As the only Lisbon sister worth remembering, Dunst pretty much carries the movie, and does it confidently and well. But on the other side, Witherspoon played the girlfriend of the American Psycho and did a fine job in her few scenes doing little more than serving as a vehicle for a variety of dated '80s hairstyles and outfits and reminding us of the uptight virgin she played in Cruel Intentions. Could Reese Witherspoon have played any of the Lisbons? Maybe if there were any evidence she'd ever taken that pole out of her ass, we'd believe it.

Advantage: Kirsten Dunst, but her lead is slim. Reese could still get it back.