BUT I’M A CHEERLEADER (1999)
Directed by Jamie Babbit
Megan has everything a perfectly normal teenage girl is supposed to want. She’s popular, she’s a cheerleader and she has a handsome football-player boyfriend. There’s just one problem: everyone around her seems convinced that she’s a lesbian.
Alarmed, Megan’s parents send her to True Directions, a hilariously artificial conversion-therapy camp where boys are taught to chop wood, girls learn domestic skills and everyone is expected to emerge reassuringly heterosexual.
Instead, Megan meets the rebellious and decidedly unimpressed Graham, and begins discovering that the problem may not be who she is, but everyone else’s determination to tell her who she should be.
Starring Natasha Lyonne and Clea DuVall, with RuPaul, Cathy Moriarty, Melanie Lynskey and Michelle Williams, Jamie Babbit’s candy-coloured satire turns conformity, sexuality and suburban respectability inside out.
Funny, romantic, defiantly camp and much smarter than its bubblegum colours initially suggest, But I’m a Cheerleader has grown from an overlooked comedy into a genuine cult classic.
Director: Jamie Babbit
Starring: Natasha Lyonne, Clea DuVall, Cathy Moriarty, RuPaul
Country: USA
Year: 1999
Genre: Comedy / Romance / Satire
Runtime: 85 minutes
Language: English