Gonne al bivio

Incredible social commentary. Yes, It's a little campy, but it's all supposed to be that way. It's an amusing look at attempting to 'rehab" homosexuals with therapy and "finding their roots". Great acting all around, excellent writing.

Personally, it was the subtle things that did it for me. Mary's son was funny, and the cut-outs (just pay attention to the boys' lessons) were Hilarious. I thought it was a great tongue-in-cheek way of saying "okay, this is stupid, we need to let them be" for the gay community.

If you're in the mood for a lot of laughing, and RuPaul out-of-drag to boot, rent this one.

This film is a biting and hilarious parody of people who not only force themselves into artificial molds but also feel the to make other people fit the same stereotypical molds. The main attack of the satire is on the delusion that homosexuals can be cured by people who are themselves repressed homosexuals.

Deliciously silly victorian roles of males and females are superimposed on the teenagers who struggle not to be who they really are. But the garishly-colored costumes of the 1950's "Father Knows Best" and "Leave It To Beaver" style are as incongruous as the fake role-playing. In the end, at least some of the young victims of this cruelty escape to face a life of being themselves.

An acquaintance of mine saw this movie and told me, with a negative connotation, "that movie was about a bunch of lesbians!" This was a while ago and I had forgotten about the movie but I picked up the box at the rental store the other day and decided to make my own judgments. This story was a stroke of genius! A cheerleader who thinks she is straight, talked into being a lesbian by a bunch of people trying to make her straight, well, they talked her into the realization that she was, in fact,homosexual, although, I don't think I'd enjoy kissing Megan's boyfriend either, I thought he'd drown her in his salava.

This movie was in the spirit of some John Waters' films I hold close to my heart. Mink Stole (Cry-Baby) must smell a great movie from a mile away. The casting was great. Cathy Moriarty was so funny as the spokesperson for the kind of "normalcy" preached in the 1950's. RuPaul was hilarious as the reformed closet homosexual, Julie Delpy (Before Sunrise) proves again to be the mysterious and beautiful European type character. Lastly, but most importantly, Natasha Lyonne and Clea DuVall. These two women, who are spectacular actors in themselves, had strong and intense chemistry. Their portrayals of Megan and Graham were up to perfection and I truly believed in their characters, in short, they just really got me.

This movie is perfect for anyone who wants to see two people, who were meant for each other, overcoming obstacles to be together. And their obstacles were hilarious. I almost died during the "sexual simulation"

"You know who you are and you know who you want. Aint nothin' gonna change that, s***!" Everyone should have a friend like Andre.

As gays and lesbians have achieved more and more acceptance in our society, a countervailing force – led mostly by conservative religious organizations - has been rearing its head in recent years. The movement is often referred to as `reparative therapy,' the rather absurd notion that, with just a little grit, determination and behavior modification, homosexuals can be `cured' of their `illness' and groomed to take their place as fine, upstanding members of the heterosexual community. Certain `treatment centers' dedicated to this dubious cause have even begun to spring up in areas around the country, modeling themselves after 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous.

The makers of `But I'm a Cheerleader' have chosen to have a little fun with the concept, imagining one of these centers in almost surrealistic terms. Sweet-faced Natasha Lyonne stars as Megan, a regular teenager happily content to give her all to her cheerleading squad and only mildly confused as to why she can't seem to get quite as excited by her boyfriend as by thoughts of her buxom cheerleader buddies. Suspecting her of being a lesbian – long before Megan herself does, actually – her `concerned' parents, friends and boyfriend cart her off to True Directions, a treatment center tucked safely away in the country. In this bucolic setting, Megan and a group of other `deviants' are put through the rigors of a 5-step therapy program which includes admitting their homosexuality, undergoing gender role playing and even `practicing' man/woman sexual behavior under the stern tutelage of the mistress of the place. In keeping with the near-surrealism of the subject matter, the center is done up in an almost Montessori school motif, with bold colored walls and furniture somehow emphasizing the cold, inhuman sterility of the setting.

`But I'm a Cheerleader' is, by no means, a great or entirely successful comedy. Its attempts at humor, particularly in its opening scenes, seem a bit forced and heavy-handed at times. Moreover, the tone shifts a bit uneasily every so often, running the gamut from stylized absurdity to heartbreaking seriousness. Still, the undisciplined messiness is really part of the film's overall charm. It removes the work from the same category as all those ultra-slick bubble-headed comedies about teens that major studios seem to release with frightening regularity. And the movie does have many laugh-out-loud moments of inspired lunacy, showing to what preposterous lengths many straights and even some pressured gays will go in order to `correct' the uncorrectable. We see the girls being given instructions on how to use a vacuum cleaner, wear makeup and change diapers. The boys are instructed in the fine arts of wood chopping, throwing a football and fixing cars. These scenes work, in particular, not only for their comic effectiveness but their underlying poignancy, as these scared youngsters – many threatened with disownment by their parents if they don't `straighten up' – give it their all, against all hope, to truly change, to deny the very person their raging hormones are screaming at them to be.

The movie also manages to make the gay characters seem real and believable. Thanks to a superb cast, many of the teens emerge as touching, three-dimensional people rather than the cartoon characters that they might have become in a similar film of this kind - particularly when it would be so easy for them to become so in the face of the caricatures of parents and camp counselors who swirl around them in this highly stylized setting. Prime among these is Cathy Moriarty, brilliant as Mary, the prim and proper leader of the establishment, a woman whose righteous wrong-headedness the actress captures to a comic tee. In contrast, Rue Paul, out of drag for once, gives a superbly understated performance as an `ex-gay' now working for the enemy. Among the teens, Lyonne and Clea DuVall, as the girl Megan falls in love with, are the obvious standouts. They turn these potentially cardboard comic characters into full-sized, instantly recognizable young women filled with yearning, confusion and a desire to both please others and be true to themselves.

And that is the ultimate message of this film. Though done in an absurd way, the movie strives to point out that all of us must be allowed to be who we are and to live the life that best suits us. Whether we are gay, straight or whatever, that's a philosophy of life we all need to be reminded of from time to time.

So many people do not like this movie simply because they do not understand it. First of all, yes the movie is full of stereotypes, but that's the point. They're there to show how ridiculous these stereotypes really are and to show that in the end, you cannot change who you are, you just have to learn to accept it and get the people around you to accept you. Second, some stereotypes that I've heard people notice really weren't there. I don't think anywhere in the movie did they try to make Christians look stupid (hey, the homophobic Christians are pretty good at making themselves look stupid WITHOUT help). Okay maybe Megan's comment about "God is good, God is straight - hey that's pretty good," but still, I think sometimes people LOOK for something to be offended by. I think this movie does make fun of many straight people, who claim that gays are recruiting, when it is actually the other way around (as one can see by the existence of True Directions, and in the fact that when Megan asks them to teach her to be a lesbian, they tell her that they can't do that). All in all, this is a great movie and I really enjoyed it! As for people who didn't, hey, you're allowed to not like it, but if it is for reasons that really don't seem warranted, maybe you should give But I'm a Cheerleader another look.