But I'm a Cheerleader

There's something about Megan (Natasha Lyonne) that just isn't right. She's turning vegetarian. She has a Melissa Etheridge poster on her bedroom wall. And she can't stomach her jock boyfriend's wet kisses. Could she be a lesbian? Her parents and friends stage an intervention, at True Directions, a re-education camp for teenagers straying from the straight and narrow. Enter as a gender-bending skinhead, a goth girl, or a big sissy and under the watchful eyes of RuPaul and Cathy Moriarty, you'll leave rehabilitated as a "happy heterosexual . . . or else."

Jamie Babbit's glossy comedy runs out of plot way too soon but ekes out just enough laughs to serve its terrific premise. The film slyly suggests that repression, not recruitment, will swell the gay and lesbian ranks. Megan doesn't think she's a dyke until she's trained not to be one at True Directions. Dressed up like pink bobby-soxers, the girls learn to cook, clean, and kiss the right way. (Boys are taught to throw a football and chop wood.) Yet sparks start to fly every time Megan shares a scrub brush with Graham (Clea DuVall). Other familiar faces in the colorful cast include Mink Stole, Bud Cort, and TV hunk Eddie Cibrian (as Moriarty's swishy son, Rock). The film also brings back to the screen Melanie Lynskey, whose wonderful performance as the sullen murderess in Heavenly Creatures was overshadowed by co-star Kate Winslet's subsequent fame. I imagined Lynskey back in New Zealand overweight and fuming. If we're to judge by Cheerleader, she's blossomed into an unusual beauty and a fine actress. At the Avon.
-- Scott Heller