I've said it before and will again: I love a good movie based on a pun. The central premise of "But I'm a Cheerleader" is playing with the two (or more) different definitions of a single word, to put the camp in its story of a conversion-therapy camp. It's quite a consistent commitment to exaggerated irony and gaudy bright colors. I prefer this to something that, pardon the phrasing (or not--I don't care), plays the subject of conversion therapy straight--"For the Bible Tells Me So" (2007), "The Miseducation of Cameron Post" or "Boy Erased" (both 2018). The light humor helps the medicine of the message go down--especially so if you don't need any converting to the fact that conversion therapy is bunk. Nevertheless, hard to argue such a message wasn't needed when homophobia seems the plausible explanation for why something this non-explicit required cuts to a avoid an NC-17 rating.
The camp also adds another layer of affectation to the reflexive notion of actors-playing-actors, as their homosexual characters pretend to convert to heterosexuality. There's a couple especially funny gags based on this. The first involves Natasha Lyonne's titular cheerleader ironically only being coaxed out of the closet by the intervention of her family and friends trying to turn her straight. The first paradoxical step here to attraction to the opposite sex being admitting, "I'm a homosexual," as if it were Alcoholics Anonymous. The second and briefer bit involves the most seemingly stereotypical lesbian member of the camp, who in fact isn't a lesbian at all, but is forced by the camp to pretend she is. Hilarious that the only straight kid at the camp doesn't graduate it.
The boys side of the camp is but a subplot here, but it's also amusing that drag queen RuPaul plays their "ex-gay" counselor Mike. Michelle Williams, on the other hand, still in her pre-acclaimed actress, "Dawson's Creek" days, is underused. "But I'm a Cheerleader" only stumbles a bit when it inevitably moves from playing everything as a joke to taking discrimination seriously, but it does about as well as may be expected in maintaining a light and sweet tone during this otherwise tonal shift.
The camp also adds another layer of affectation to the reflexive notion of actors-playing-actors, as their homosexual characters pretend to convert to heterosexuality. There's a couple especially funny gags based on this. The first involves Natasha Lyonne's titular cheerleader ironically only being coaxed out of the closet by the intervention of her family and friends trying to turn her straight. The first paradoxical step here to attraction to the opposite sex being admitting, "I'm a homosexual," as if it were Alcoholics Anonymous. The second and briefer bit involves the most seemingly stereotypical lesbian member of the camp, who in fact isn't a lesbian at all, but is forced by the camp to pretend she is. Hilarious that the only straight kid at the camp doesn't graduate it.
The boys side of the camp is but a subplot here, but it's also amusing that drag queen RuPaul plays their "ex-gay" counselor Mike. Michelle Williams, on the other hand, still in her pre-acclaimed actress, "Dawson's Creek" days, is underused. "But I'm a Cheerleader" only stumbles a bit when it inevitably moves from playing everything as a joke to taking discrimination seriously, but it does about as well as may be expected in maintaining a light and sweet tone during this otherwise tonal shift.