But I'm a Cheerleader (1999)

Can I just take a minute and say how much I love stat-checking?  So much.  Seriously, 19 people did a Google search for this blog by name.  By.  Name.  (What, you people don't know what the "Follow" button is for?)  And that's just this week!  Holy shit, that makes me happy.  I know it's not cool to get excited about stuff on the Internet but I only started this blog because I needed a safe place to spew wordvomit about movies so my co-workers wouldn't beat me to death with gardening implements.  The fact that I've had almost 300 hits this month and it's only halfway over makes my pitted little coal-black heart swell with joy.  Then I go to some other sites and see they get that many hits per minute and come back down to reality.  But for those brief seconds, I am filled with bliss.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

  This was a fun, campy movie about a girl whose family figures out she's a lesbian waaaay before she does and sends her to a rehabilitation facility.  It stars Natasha Lyonne and Clea Duvall, who I'm surprised isn't a bigger star by now.  She's done a lot of TV work (Heroes and Carnivale jump to mind) but no really good starring vehicles.  It's a shame too. 

There are a lot of famous or at least recognizable characters in small roles like Michelle Williams, RuPaul, Eddie Cibrian, Melanie Lynskey (with her real accent), Dante Basco (Rufio from Hook), and Julie Delpy. 

There is an entire sub-genre of gay and lesbian films that I am nowhere near as well-versed in as I should be.  Granted, I'm not well-versed in any particular genre but I feel kind of bad that I've been oblivious to this one for so long.  If anyone knows any really good gay films that aren't the Twilight series, hit up the comments and let me know. 

A lot of the humor here comes from how naive these kids in the rehab facility are.  They are genuinely committed to becoming straight, eagerly participating in 'gender assignment' activities (cleaning and putting on makeup for the girls and football and chopping wood for the boys) and coming up with ridiculous 'root' stories about what event in their formative years made them gay.  There is almost no focus on the severe cognitive dissonance involved in denying who they are in order to fit into what the people around them want them to be, opting instead to highlight the absurdities using sight gags and stereotypes.  Which isn't to say that it's not funny.  It is.  A lot of the gags have been done before (and since) but they're delivered well, which keeps them fresh enough for one viewing.  Not enough for me to buy, but a fun rental nonetheless.