One of my favorite movie discoveries this year is "But I'm a Cheerleader," a satirical LGBT romantic comedy that has developed a significant cult following over the years. It's about a high school cheerleader named Megan (Natasha Lyonne), who is suspected of lesbianism and shipped off to a conversion therapy program, True Directions, by her frightened parents (Bud Cort, Mink Stole). True Directions is run by the villainous Mary Brown (Cathy Moriarty) and her henchman Mike (RuPaul in one of his only roles out of drag). Fellow campers include Hilary (Melanie Lynskey), Dolph (Dante Basco), and a sarcastic rebel named Graham (Clea DuVall). Megan doesn't believe that she's a lesbian, but her time at True Directions makes her question herself, and she develops a connection with Graham.
Critics at the time of the film's release complained that the film's lampooning of anti-LGBT panic and homophobic cultural norms were too broad and tended to be preaching to the choir. Its embrace of campy visuals and references to counterculture greats like John Waters was appreciated, but at the same time some felt that the comedy was too gentle, and the skewering wasn't nearly as strong as it could have been. However, remembering where the culture was in 1999, two years after Ellen Degeneres coming out, with broad swathes of the United States still wildly misinformed about anything having to do with the LGBT community, "But I'm a Cheerleader" doesn't seem miscalibrated to me at all. In fact, I think it's held up very well, and its humor and messaging are more timely than ever.
I love the film's utterly unsubte art direction. True Directions exists in this totally artificial world of constructed gender norms, where Megan and her fellow happy campers are pushed to conform themselves to aggressively color coded stereotypes of outdated heterosexuality. The girls are put in pink uniforms, get makeovers, and perform housework with pastel cleaning implements. The boys are put in blue, and obliged to build up their masculinity through sports and manual labor. The sets are painted to resemble dollhouse aesthetics, filling the frame with big blocks of oppressive color. Outside the confines of True Directions, the world is also heightened to some degree, and there's some brief goosing of LGBT culture, but the main event is really the nightmarishly reductive vision of heteronormativity that is being imposed on Megan.
"Cheerleader" features a great collection of talent and some memorable performances. Natasha Lyonne and Clea DuVall are very winning as our two confused teenaged heroines, who eventually figure out their priorities and their feelings for each other. I like Lyonne especially, for keeping Megan three-dimensional and complicated in the face of so much absurdity. She's very honest in her doubts about being a lesbian, and it's easy to relate to her growing pains. However, Cathy Moriarty steals the movie. She makes for such a hysterical villain here, hellbent on stamping out any whiff of non-conformity while made up like a demented Martha Stewart. I haven't seen her in anything significant in such a long time, and I'd forgotten how amazing she is in roles like this.
I suspect that this would have been one of my favorite films if I'd seen it as a teenager. It fits right into that vein of goofy, off-kilter comedies about outsiders, and it has the outlandish visuals I love, like "Edward Scissorhands" and "The Addams Family" movies. I'm a little sad that director Jamie Babbitt doesn't seem to have attempted something this visually ambitious since. Sure, it's messaging is too blunt, and its style is sometimes garish, but "Cheerleader" does such a good job of capturing that feeling of adolescent alienation and awkwardness, and handles its characters with a deftness that I admire. Also, I'm a sucker for an unrealistically happy ending.
I understand why this movie didn't connect with everyone, but it managed to hit the bullseye dead center for me.
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