But I’m A Cheerleader

A high school cheerleader with “lesbian tendencies” (Nathasha Lyonne) is hustled off to a deprogramming camp run by an aggressive, ultra-butch headmistress (Cathy Moriarty doing Faye Dunaway doing Joan Crawford)—where she falls in love with one of her roommates (Clea DuVall). Writer Brian Wayne Peterson and director Jamie Babbit’s broad satire of homophobia and the religious right might have been funny had it not been for their mind-boggling ineptitude. The most rudimentary elements of filmmaking—lighting and editing, for example, to say nothing of comedy writing and acting—are completely beyond them, and the result is the kind of sloppy junk that gives home movies a bad name. Among the ill-served cast are RuPaul Charles as Moriarty’s assistant and Bud Cort and Mink Stole as Lyonne’s parents.