Cheerleader centers on a bubbly high schooler named Megan (Natasha Lyonne) who hasn't really given much thought as to why she's starting to find the other girls on her cheerleading squad so alluring. But her parents (Bud Cort and Mink Stole, of all people) have certainly gotten wise to their offspring's libido. That's why they've had her carted off to True Directions, an intervention program designed to turn budding gays and lesbians into perfect, conformist heterosexual citizens. Run by a woman with the suspiciously plain-brown-wrapper name of Mary Brown (Cathy Moriarty) -- whose demeanor suggests what Martha Stewart might be like if she gave in to her inner dominatrix -- True Directions looks like a candy-colored Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Pinks (for girls) and blues (for boys) predominate in the oversize hellish dollhouse of a place. And instead of Conrad Veidt's Cesare the Somnambulist, the chief factotum is an out-of-drag RuPaul. He's in charge of getting the boys in properly masculine shape -- through sports -- while Moriarty's Mary sets the girls to work cooking and cleaning.
Happily Megan finds a true direction that True Directions didn't have in mind when this very "femme" young miss meets the perfect "butch" in the snarlingly cynical form of Graham (Clea DuVall), a girl whose sexual orientation no amount of reprogramming is going to alter. In no time at all, love is in bloom and revolt is in the air, as the girls proceed to reveal True Directions for the teetering house of cards that it is. Nothing unusual about this. In fact, third-act Love Conquers All revolts against whatever Powers May Be is standard operating procedure for comedy. Similarly standard-issue yet entertaining nonetheless are jokes about boys who throw balls "like a girl," as well as raunchy gags involving Mary's stud-puppy son Rock (Eddie Cibrian), whose butchness fails to belie the fact that he's gayer than RuPaul in drag.
Still, this all takes a back seat to the Megan-Graham love match and its striking parallel to the true story of Exodus International, an "ex-gay" ministry the male founders of which met, fell in love, and abandoned the organization they helped found in order to fight it. One Nation Under God, a 1993 documentary by Teodoro Maniaci and Francine Rzeznik (now available on home video), recounts the saga of Exodus and the network of ex-gay ministries it created, which continue to this very day to drain the finances of misguided parents and the brains of their hapless offspring. Because such organizations are religiously affiliated, they have no worry about either paying taxes or being investigated for fraud. Moreover, once the psychobabble and this veneer of piety is peeled away, ex-gay methodology is a fairly simple affair. Just regard same-sexuality as "acts" separate from the individuals who commit them, get said individuals to refrain from said acts -- or at least claim that they do -- and voilà! You've got yourself an ex-gay.
Not too high a standard there, you know. In fact, as I'm not having sex right at this moment, I could very well claim to be an ex-gay too. Of course my "ex" status probably won't last the afternoon, but I'm sure that wouldn't matter to the likes of fundamentalist power broker Janet Parshall or advice-dispensing physiologist "Dr." Laura. We live in a culture where hypocrisy rules, appearance is all, and "do as I say, not as I do," is the glue that holds the fraud of "don't ask, don't tell" together. But getting to the bottom of that requires a very different sort of movie. And it's most definitely not a comedy.
