But I’m a Cheerleader is one of the best coming-of age stories I’ve ever seen.
It’s completely over-the-top, and that’s what makes this parody so funny: you buy into the satire because it’s so extravagant and the exaggerations make you laugh instead of wincing critically.
The movie begins with Megan, a good Christian girl who doesn’t really like kissing her jock boyfriend, has posters of girls instead of boys in her locker, and is a vegetarian. Her entourage and family read all of these as signs that she’s a lesbian.
Everyone sees it except for Megan — but she’s a cheerleader — she can’t possibly be gay!
The staged intervention with RuPaul, wearing a tight T-shirt that reads “Straight Is Good” and playing an ex-gay counsellor at a reparative therapy school, is really hilarious.
But I don’t want to give it all away . . .
Suffice to say, the little pink school and all its gay students who by graduation will be “straight” again is sarcasm stretched to its limits. Gay stereotypes are overdone and taken to absurdity but in a way that makes you warm up to the characters and laugh, if not from the belly, then from the heart in sympathy.
I really recommend this film if you haven’t seen it already.
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