BUT I'M A CHEERLEADER (Lions Gate) Starring: Natasha Lyonne, Clea DuVall, Cathy Moriarty, But Cort, Mink Stole, RuPaul Charles. Screenplay: Brian Wayne Peterson. Producers: Andrea Sperling and Leanna Creel. Director: Jamie Babbit. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, adult themes) Running Time: 85 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
There's something terribly depressing about a wonderful concept turned into mush by someone who doesn't know how to handle it. The irritations of a film like THE REPLACEMENTS are far more mundane by comparison-you know that it will be at best a tolerable audience-friendly mediocrity, at worst a bland, pressed and processed Entertainment McNugget. BUT I'M A CHEERLEADER, on the other hand, could have been a brilliant bit of satire. It could have been the kind of film that, even while preaching to the choir, highlights the magnificent absurdities of a very hot-button issue. It could have been the CITIZEN RUTH of the "gay conversion" movement.
Could've been, but isn't. Jamie Babbit's sloppy, smirking story introduces us to Megan (Natasha Lyonne), a middle-class girl with a boyfriend, good Christian parents (But Cort and Mink Stole) and the enviable life of a high school cheerleader. Her friends and family also believe that she has a secret-namely, that she harbors unnatural, unhealthy desires for other women. Megan denies that she's a lesbian, but nonetheless she is sent to True Directions, a facility for curing homosexuals headed by the tough love team of Mary (Cathy Moriarty) and Mike (RuPaul Charles, virtually unrecognizable in male attire). Soon Megan is deep into the five-step program, but she also finds herself interested in a surly fellow "patient" named Graham (Clea DuVall) -- interested in an unnatural, unhealthy desire sort of way.
Somewhere, buried deep in BUT I'M A CHEERLEADER, is the germ of a risky comic idea: that Megan really isn't gay until she comes to True Directions, which in effect converts her contrary to their goals by exposing her to other lesbians. There's something in that idea to anger virtually anyone, only Babbit doesn't pursue it. Instead, she makes it clear from the opening minutes that Megan is repressing latent desires, and that her denials merely represent a state of denial. Even the good gags Babbit wrings from this variation -- like the photo in Megan's school locker -- are underlined too obviously, and never reach into truly daring areas. The campy tone set in the first half-hour, including Moriarty's drag diva performance, show that Babbit isn't particularly interested in scathing humor. Simple mockery suits her just fine.
Even that tone, however, proves to be one she can't sustain. BUT I'M A CHEERLEADER might never have been riotously funny as the silly spoof it initially appears to be, but at least it might have felt consistent. Babbit makes the ridiculous decision to bounce back and forth between scoring points off swishy stereotypes, exploring the conflicts of family reaction to homosexuality and developing an actual romantic sub-plot. There's not nearly enough substance to BUT I'M A CHEERLEADER for its serious side to feel anything but token, and too many misguided serious moments to give it a real comic kick. You can feel BUT I'M A CHEERLEADER's potential bubbling to the surface when the program participants sit around sharing the "root" for their same-sex desire (one girl's mother wore pants to her wedding; another saw the horror of her mother as breadwinner while Dad was unemployed). And you can feel that potential being crushed under Babbit's leaden heel every time Megan and Graham share a tender moment.
There are plenty of people who take the idea of converting gays and lesbians to heterosexuality very seriously, and plenty of people with same-sex attractions who desperately want such programs to work. Babbit never seems to clue into that fact, or she would base her satire more squarely in the growing popularity of these programs. Instead, she lays out BUT I'M A CHEERLEADER as though the whole idea were self-evidently ludicrous, and gets lazy about finding the humor in people scrambling for conformity, acceptance and easy answers to a challenging issue. BUT I'M A CHEERLEADER simply isn't funny enough often enough, and that's the kiss of death for a low-budget comedy full of broad performances and careless story-telling (what happened to the foreshadowing involving another girl's apparent jealousy of Megan and Graham's relationship?). There's no excuse for a subject this incendiary to be the stuff of pratfalls and sappy endings.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 cheer miseries: 3.
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