But I'm a Cheerleader

A social satire with a candy-colored ambience and a campy John Waters bent, But I'm a Cheerleader casts caustic Natasha Lyonne (Slums of Beverly Hills) deliberately against type as a peppy-under-peer-pressure cheerleader who eats tofu, listens to Melissa Etheridge and is so indifferent to the drooling advances of her jock boyfriend that her panicked Bible-beater parents pack her away to a retreat where sexually tilted teenagers are supposed to be "cured" of homosexual tendencies. The camp has the opposite effect on Lyonne, who finds herself hot for the resident tomboy (Clea DuVall, Girl, Interrupted). The picture is uneven, technically inept, heavy-handed and overly self-conscious, but its also consistently funny and very well cast, with Cathy Moriarty as the camp's sadistic Donna Reed proprietor and an out-of-drag RuPaul as a heavily in denial homo-rehab counselor. Optional. (R. Blackwelder)