8 / 10
Official trailer
But I’m a Cheerleader is Jamie Babbit’s 1999 American satirical romantic comedy depicting a high school cheerleader sent to a conversion therapy camp by her parents who discover romantic relationships develop between her and another resident across the camp’s program. Natasha Lyonne plays Megan Bloomfield. Clea DuVall plays Graham Eaton. Cathy Moriarty plays Mary Brown. RuPaul plays Mike. Bud Cort plays Peter. Mink Stole plays Nancy. Eddie Cibrian plays Rock. Melanie Lynskey plays Hilary. Michelle Williams plays Kimberly.
Brian Wayne Peterson wrote the screenplay based on a story by Jamie Babbit. Lions Gate Films distributed the film in July 2000 to modest commercial reception and wide later reappraisal as one of the foundational queer-cinema productions of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
I adore this movie’s nerve. It takes conversion therapy, a subject with nothing funny about it, paints it pink and blue, and gets away with the joke because it’s so clearly on its characters’ side. It’s funny, sweet and angry at once. I’d rate it higher if the satire didn’t go so broad in places that some of the camp’s residents shrink into sight gags.
But I’m a Cheerleader has accumulated serious critical and cultural reputation across the more than two decades since its release. Babbit’s directorial debut applies bright pastel-color art-direction to considerably serious subject matter, with the conversion-therapy camp setting rendered as deliberately artificial space that signals the screenplay’s satirical positioning throughout. The film works at once as queer-cinema romance, as satirical commentary on conversion-therapy practices, and as considerably affectionate teen comedy.
The combination produces a film that deserves its position alongside Go (1999), American Beauty (1999), and Election (1999) in the late-1990s American comedy cycle while distinguishing itself through its queer-protagonist commitment.
Jamie Babbit’s Visual Style
Babbit’s particular directorial choice was to render the conversion-therapy camp through deliberately heightened pastel color palette that signals the screenplay’s satirical positioning throughout. Pink dominates the female residents’ areas of the camp’s interior and blue dominates the male residents’ areas, with the gendered color-coding operating as both visual joke and as real commentary on the binary-gender ideology that the camp’s program enforces.
The visual artifice extends throughout the film’s production design. The camp’s exteriors, costumes, set decorations, and even meal sequences all contribute to a heightened-stylized environment that audiences can’t mistake for realistic representation. The technique allows the film to address its serious subject matter through deliberate satirical distance instead of through documentary-realism that might have produced less digestible cinema.
The pink and blue color scheme is my favorite joke in the film. It tells you everything about the camp’s thinking before anybody opens their mouth, and I laugh every time the film cuts back to it.
For Writers
Visual artifice in satirical filmmaking can carry real commentary that documentary-realism approaches couldn’t deliver. Babbit’s pastel production design encodes the screenplay’s critique of binary-gender ideology throughout the film’s visual tone.
Natasha Lyonne’s Performance
Natasha Lyonne plays Megan Bloomfield with the certain innocent earnestness that the role required. The character believes herself to be heterosexual at the film’s opening and must work through the gradual recognition of her actual sexuality across the running time. Lyonne’s performance maintains the character’s earnest specificity throughout. That gives the film its emotional foundation.
Lyonne’s casting was key to the film’s tonal balance. She refuses both obvious choices, never playing Megan as someone who already knows and never as someone tormented by finding out. Megan’s gradual discovery feels like real personal growth, and that gives the film its romantic-comedy weight on top of its political point. I believe every step of it, and I think Lyonne’s sincerity is what keeps the whole candy-colored thing from floating away.
For Writers
Coming-out narratives work best when the protagonist’s gradual recognition is real personal development instead of as predetermined narrative arc. Lyonne’s Megan refuses both the knowing-protagonist and the anguished-protagonist shortcuts.
Cathy Moriarty’s Mary Brown
Cathy Moriarty plays the conversion-therapy camp director Mary Brown with sustained satirical commitment that the surrounding production requires. The character is invested in her program with apparently real sincerity while the screenplay reveals layer after layer of her own unaddressed identity issues. Moriarty’s performance handles the character’s contradictions without ever collapsing into easy mockery.
Mary Brown’s eventual revelation that her own son is gay, despite or because of her camp program, works as satire aimed at conversion-therapy practitioners and as real development for the antagonist at once. Moriarty plays that recognition with a dramatic weight that lifts the satirical material around her. Hers is my favorite performance in the film, and I’d put it among the strongest supporting turns in 1990s queer cinema.
For Writers
Satirical antagonists work best when the actor refuses to play them as cardboard villains. Moriarty’s Mary Brown carries real emotional weight that the screenplay’s broader satirical positioning couldn’t have delivered alone.
Craft Note
Jamie Babbit’s directorial debut was But I’m a Cheerleader. She later directed The Quiet (2005), Itty Bitty Titty Committee (2007), and real television work including episodes of Russian Doll, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Silicon Valley. The 1999 film cost approximately one million dollars and grossed modestly across theatrical release. Later home-video, cable, streaming, and academic-cinema circulation have considerably extended the film’s audience and cultural reputation. But I’m a Cheerleader has become among the most consistently referenced queer-cinema productions of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Is But I’m a Cheerleader worth watching?
An 8 from me. Babbit’s pastel world, Lyonne’s earnest Megan and Moriarty’s layered villain add up to a comedy with real heart and a real target, and it deserves its place as a foundational text of American queer cinema. The broadest gags keep it from climbing higher, since a few of the camp’s residents never get to be more than punchlines. For queer-cinema enthusiasts and anyone who cares about 1990s American film, I’d call it required viewing.
