![]() Yang, who play brothers hoping for a weekend of partying. The movie also features some excellent campy performances, especially from Michael Peña, who stars as the resort’s mysterious host, plus Party Down’s Ryan Hansen and Space Force’s Jimmy O. I don’t want to detail any specifics, since part of the joy of Fantasy Island is predicting plot twists, but suffice it to say they’re all delightfully stupid. Five strangers head to a resort with the promise of fulfilling their greatest wish, but those wishes quickly turn nightmarish. While that is undoubtedly a fair assessment - the story is chock full of plot holes - I’d like to nominate Fantasy Island as the next cult classic “bad” movie.Įverything about Fantasy Island is bonkers. ![]() Read this Fantasy Island Photo: Christopher Moss/Columbia Picturesīlumhouse’s Fantasy Island, based on the 1977 TV series of the same name, is sitting at a whopping 8% on Rotten Tomatoes. Chris Planteīut I’m a Cheerleader is streaming on Criterion Channel. With enough time and perspective, classics can become crap, and camp can become classic. ![]() And what a reminder that reviews, like art, are imperfect and themselves worth revisiting. But I’m a Cheerleader is lazy counterpropaganda-which is always a bore in a fiction film, even if you’re a cheerleader for the cause.” The review was titled, I shit you not, “Heterophobia.” At Slate, David Edelstein wrote at the time, “the point of view is so sniggeringly one-sided that the picture has no tension. This morning, I skimmed through some of the film’s reviews. But I’m a Cheerleader, in contrast, has a score of 39. That game, despite (or maybe because of) its deep cynicism has received a Metacritic score of 95. This optimism stood in stark contrast to the other entertainment I carved through this weekend, The Last of Us 2, in which two young women find love only to be shot, maimed, bludgeoned, and bitten by humans and zombie-like monsters. By the end, the film’s camp has consumed its entire world, converting it into a safer, better space for its couple to live, leaving its bigoted antagonists on the outs. The walls of the home are painted in gaudy robin’s egg blue and Pepto-Bismol pink, suits are made of vinyl and beefy men wear daisy dukes. Love, in this world, warps reality in its favor. Her film is a safe space, in which its villains are ineffectual and its sets fantastical, like a lucid dream in which the central couple are always in control. Critics at the time compared the movie to the works of John Waters, but its texture more resembles the smart, sappy, and scrappy style of The Adventures of Pete and Pete and 1990s DIY culture.Ī queer love story set within the walls of a sexuality conversion center doesn’t sound like comedy fodder, but Babbit leverages the power of camp. What a mistake: Director Jamie Babbit’s rom-com about a teenage lesbian forced to live at a residential conversion therapy clinic is campy and sentimental and everything I needed this weekend. But I’m a Cheerleader Image: Criterion Collectionįor years, I’d let But I’m a Cheerleader collect dust in my backlog, partly due to its terrible reviews. Be sure to let us know in the comments what you enjoyed over the weekend, too. Below, we’ve collected our other favorite selections, so that you can watch them alongside us. The disparity is obvious once you check it out.īut I’m a Cheerleader wasn’t the only thing those of us at Polygon watched this weekend. Also today, it’s a featured film on the Criterion Channel. ![]() Today, it sits with a 39% on Rotten Tomatoes. Starring Natasha Lyonne as a bubbly cheerleader waking up to her own sexuality, Clea Duvall as her soon-to-be love interest, and RuPaul as a “reformed” ex-gay, the movie was ripped by critics in 1999. One of those movies is But I’m a Cheerleader, which took nearly 20 years to be appreciated on a critical level. What once was “bad” can, in the rearview mirror, look ahead of its time. Whether reviled or heralded upon release, deemed significant or minor in the grand spectrum of a director’s work, films - or any other art, for that matter - take on new context as the years roll on.
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