Further Proof That Gay Audiences Will Buy Anything

Citymars

Someday, gay cinema will grow up.  In the meantime gay women and men are so hungry for representation, so starved to see themselves on the silver screen, that even junk like this is welcomed.

Comparisons to John Waters' films are inevitable because "But I'm a Cheerleader" is low budget, gay-friendly, and rife with poor acting.  The concept is indeed fertile: if any movement is ripe for skewering it's the "convert-a-homosexual" movement.  Unfortunately the execution is overstated and witless.  The targets have been satirized so often there is little bite left in rehashing the same simple stereotypes.  Making the "straights" so preposterously anachronistic further sanitizes the potential for humor. The fable is meant to be contemporary, but the well-meaning bad guys are right out of a 1950's nightmare of conformity that barely existed even in the 1950's.  All the girls in pink, all the boys in blue?  Well, if nothing else, it's easy to follow.

Cathy Moriarty plays the founder of "True Directions," but her lackluster performance seems more like your typical Mary Woronov star turn.  RuPaul was clearly cast with an eye towards irony (he is out of drag here), but his limitations as an actor overshadow the joke.  Other cast members have likewise been seen elsewhere to better advantage.  Only the two young romantic (female) leads are appealing, yet even when triumphant they remain inexplicably bland and one-dimensional.  It's one thing to show lead characters with the life sucked out of them by a conservative society, another to weigh down the film with their lifelessness.

"But I'm a Cheerleader" should have been hilarious.  It's too bad that the filmmakers approached the material with a kindergartener's point of view. The resulting film is so dull it gives "camp" a bad name.

score 2/10

Citymars 1 May 2003

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0609247/