I've been meaning to see BUT I'M A CHEERLEADER ever since it came out in 1999 but never got around to it until now for whatever reason.This John Waters-inspired comedy directed by Jamie Babbit stars Natasha Lyonne as the titular cheerleader who comes home from high school one day to find that her family and friends have staged an intervention for her because -- gasp! -- she's a lesbian! Before she knows it, Lyonne's shipped off to a gay rehabilitation camp to learn "proper" gender roles and how to be into guys.
The most clever thing about this premise is that Lyonne is so naive and innocent that she doesn't even realize she's gay until she's told she is. Then, in another interesting twist, the anti-gay camp backfires and she learns to embrace her homosexuality more than ever.
Clea DuVall stars as Lyonne's love interest, at first a more "out" lesbian than Lyonne, but soon the tables turn as Lyonne learns more about herself and DuVall grows to just want to get out of the goddamn camp, at whatever cost. There's also Cathy Moriarty as the militant head mistress of the academy and Eddie Cibrian as her so-macho-he-must-be-gay son.
Cinema outsiders like Mink Stole, Bud Cort and even RuPaul Charles round out the colorful cast. RuPaul is especially awesome as a "reformed" gay male, playing against type but still looking pretty damn glamorous. I fucking love RuPaul.
The limited production values of indie flicks usually don't bug me as long as the movie is good, and this is a good one, but it sits in an uncomfortable valley between shoe string and small studio. So, it has A-list talent and B-list most everything else. In some ways, a John Waters tribute like this one could benefit from dirt cheap guerrilla production values. Even John Waters' own flicks suffer when they start to look too good (sometimes).
But why am I complaining, it's a funny, cute flick with a unique point of view, so who cares.
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