But I'm A Cheerleader
Topic: Movie Reviews
It was grossly rainy all last night so I got a chance to sit down and watch a movie finally. It was But I'm A Cheerleader, which is a somewhat surreal film. The plot follows a teenager named Megan, who is also a cheerleader as the title says. Her parents become concerned that she might be a lesbian so they send her to a recovery program called "True Directions." In the program, girls wear pink and boys wear blue, and they learn "appropriate" gender roles. The girls learn cooking, cleaning and childcare, while the boys learn car repair and football. This vignettes of program activities are funny but also disturbing in a subtle way. This is not over the top humor here. Instead, it's bizarrely amusing.

Despite, the surreal filming of True Directions, you do get a feel for the characters and their motivations. You can feel the very real yearning of the characters to fit in with "normal" (hetero) society. When Megan falls for another girl in the program, you share every emotion in their budding romance. As a bonus, the lesbian love scenes are very tastefully done. You can tell how much the characters care about each other.

I don't want to spoil the plot, but I will say that the ending is kind of cheesy. However, it has lots more depth than, for example, Kissing Jessica Stein. In this film, lesbianism is more than just an experiment. It's something for which people take real risks, and their struggles ring very true.

Overall, this was a good movie, especially if you're at all interested in gay/lesbian themes. There is some stereotyping of gay men, but for the most part, this film is sensitively and subtly done. The cheesy ending subtracted some points, but I still recommend it.