But I'm a Cheerleader (1999)

By the late 1990s, mainstream American cinema was beginning, however cautiously, to make space for queer stories, but the independent sector was where the more adventurous work was happening. Yi Yi is one example of the kind of character-driven drama that was finding its feet around the same period, but But I'm a Cheerleader operates in a very different register: colourful, confrontational, and wearing its politics loudly on its sleeve. Released in 1999 and running a tight 85 minutes, the film takes aim at the real-world practice of conversion therapy, wrapping its critique in the visual language of exaggerated suburban Americana. The premise follows Megan, a high school cheerleader with a devoted boyfriend and an oblivious smile, whose parents become convinced she is gay and promptly dispatch her to a residential "sexual redirection" programme called True Directions, where she and a group of other teenagers are put through a programme designed to make them straight. That the practice being lampooned was not only real but still legally operating in many US states at the time of release gives the film a pointed edge that sits uneasily alongside its candy-coloured presentation, a tension the film itself never quite resolves.

But I'm a Cheerleader was the feature debut of director Jamie Babbit, produced through Ignite Entertainment, The Kushner-Locke Company, and HKM Films. Babbit came to the project with a background in short film work, and the film bears the marks of a first feature: ambitious in its satirical aims, bold in its visual choices, and occasionally pulling against itself as a result. The cast is a genuinely interesting assembly. Natasha Lyonne, already known to audiences from her work in American Pie earlier that same year, leads as Megan, bringing a guileless warmth to a character who spends much of the film having her own identity explained to her by everyone around her. Clea DuVall plays the sardonic, leather-jacketed Graham, a foil and eventual love interest who functions as the film's cool, grounded counterpoint to Megan's wide-eyed confusion. Cathy Moriarty plays the steely, permed director of the True Directions camp with the kind of broad authority that suits the film's theatrical register. RuPaul, cast interestingly against type as the earnest, square-jawed male counsellor Mike, brings a particular charge to his scenes. And Melanie Lynskey appears in a supporting role among the camp's intake, recognisable to audiences then from her debut in Heavenly Creatures. For a film operating on a modest independent budget, it is a polished but unremarkable production in technical terms, with most of its energy going into the deliberately artificial production design rather than cinematic ambition.

Whether the film's heightened, almost theatrical artificiality serves its satirical goals or works against them is, as you might expect, the central question any review has to wrestle with. If you have thoughts on other films that play in that same space of comedy with something uncomfortable beneath the surface, it is worth checking out what we made of Mustang, another drama concerned with young people and the systems that police their identities, or the rather different comic register of Trolls. For a further 1990s point of comparison, there is also our look at Anaconda, another film from the decade that lives or dies on the question of whether its tone is intentional.

But I'm a Cheerleader (1999) arrives with a reputation as a cult classic. A satirical takedown of conversion therapy and heteronormative conditioning that's been praised for its campy boldness and ahead-of-its-time messaging. And there's no denying its heart is in the right place: Natasha Lyonne's Megan is a sympathetic heroine, RuPaul steals every scene he's in as the flamboyantly sinister camp leader Mike, and the film's central critique of "pray the gay away" ideology remains painfully relevant decades later. Yet the execution lands in an odd, tonally disorienting middle ground. The film's aesthetic (vibrant pinks and blues, exaggerated set design, characters who speak and behave like they've wandered in from a 90s Nickelodeon sitcom like Clarissa Explains It All) creates a distancing effect. What might have been intended as deliberate camp often reads as tonal confusion: are we watching a biting satire, a teen comedy, or a surreal parody? The performances lean into broad caricature, which works for some characters but leaves other characters feeling like cardboard cutouts rather than fully realised people. An interesting, well-intentioned film that's easier to admire than to love. Its cultural significance is undeniable, and there are genuinely funny, subversive moments scattered throughout. But the cartoonish presentation undercuts the emotional weight of its subject matter, leaving it feeling more quirky than the sharp satire it aspires to be.

I keep coming back to that word: admire. There are films you admire and films you actually want to sit with again, and for me this one lands firmly in the former camp. The cause is right, the instincts are often right, and Lyonne in particular deserved a sharper script to work with. But good intentions and genuine cultural significance only carry a film so far when the emotional core keeps getting smothered under another layer of hot pink. Worth seeing, worth discussing, but perhaps best appreciated as a document of its moment rather than a film that fully earns the cult reputation that has grown up around it. Sometimes a cheerleader is just a cheerleader.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 1999  | Watched: 2026-04-08

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Trailer

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