OxfordPress.com

Grade: C-

Verdict: A disappointingly lame lampoon.

Details: Starring Natasha Lyonne and Clea DuVall. Directed by Jamie Babbit. Rated R for profanity and sexual themes. 1 hour, 25 minutes.

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Review: "But I'm a Cheerleader" is a cheerful but, alas, toothless satire of homophobia and rehab programs. The potential for some very funny stuff is evident, but after a promising start, the picture sinks into overdone farce.

Our protagonist, Megan (Natasha Lyonne), would appear to be a paradigm of all-American teendom. She's a cheerleader. She has long blond hair. She dates a football player. Still, something's not quite right. Maybe it's the way her boyfriend's French kisses leave her cold. Maybe it's the Melissa Etheridge poster in her bedroom. Maybe it's that her parents are played by John Waters' workhorse Mink Stole and Bud Cort, forever identified with the cult classic "Harold and Maude."

Anyway, her family and friends stage an intervention and ship her off to True Directions, a rehab center for wayward homosexuals where the patients are rigorously indoctrinated in the straight and narrow path of the "happy heterosexual." That means everything from chopping wood (male) to vacuuming (female).

At first Megan is horrified--not so much by True Directions' insane five-step program as by the mere suggestion that she could be (gasp) a lesbian. Then she begins to have certain feelings for fellow inmate Graham (played by "Girl, Interrupted's" Clea DuVall, who seems to have studied Oscar winner Angelina Jolie very closely).

Some of the best moments are provided by RuPaul as a True Directions counselor who proudly disowns his gay past and wears a T-shirt that reads "Straight Is Great." Some of the worst, however, come from Cathy Moriarity, whose heavy-handed performance as the center's uptight director pretty much sums up what's wrong with the movie.

Filmmaker Jamie Babbit never ventures into truly risky territory. Rather, she settles for sophomoric jokes that soon become as laboriously obvious as the Almodovar-inspired palette of bright blues, pinks and oranges that saturate every frame. After all, watching limp-wristed boys try to catch a football isn't exactly cutting-edge humor.

That places like True Directions actually exist gives the movie some legitimacy. However, "Cheerleader" flubs nearly every opportunity to cut loose and really dish out some knowing, provocative nastiness. Ultimately, we get two things out of the film: RuPaul's last name (it's Charles) and the near-certainty that the kisses between Lyonne and DuVall will probably be on the short list at next year's MTV Movie Awards.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie , Cox News Service