It should be noted that the cast for The Iron Ladies—a hit Thai comedy based on the true story of a 1996 championship volleyball team whose core members were gay men, cross-dressers, and transvestites—is composed of mostly straight men. The director, Youngyooth Thongkonthun, said he cast straight actors because he "didn't want the audience to focus on the 'gayness' of the cast." Unless he was referring to the audience in the theater next door, it's virtually impossible not to focus on the minstrel-show "gayness" of Thongkonthun's actors, who have been encouraged to mince and preen wildly, and scream over chipped fingernails and foundation. All of this sets aside the more obvious point that a film about tolerance that casts non-gay actors in gay roles sends a pretty mixed message. Though wrongheaded and stereotypical, The Iron Ladies clearly means well, with the naked earnestness of those dated Hollywood films that first addressed racism or homosexuality by gingerly dipping a toe into the waters of public opinion. Thongkonthun hedges his bets by slavishly adhering to formula, in this case the triumph-over-adversary template of The Bad News Bears and other sports movies about a ragtag collective of underdogs that improves through rigorous montage training. Led by captain Sahaphap Tor, a talented player who was cut from other squads for discriminatory reasons, a new volleyball team is assembled to represent his district in competition. At the urging of his flamboyant best friend (Chaicharn Nimpulsawasdi), Tor coaxes some of his old college buddies to join the cause, including a brawny gay army sergeant (Giorgio Maiocchi), a gorgeous transsexual cabaret star (Kokkorn Benjathikoon), and a weak-willed man (Ekachai Buranapanit) who has yet to come out to his parents. As the team's lone straight player, Jessdaporn Pholdee plays the audience surrogate, a mild homophobe who's reluctant to associate with the other "Iron Ladies" at first but eventually warms to their happy camaraderie. There are no surprises in how the story plays out, though it seems unlikely that the real-life athletes won such a resounding big-game victory over bigotry. Even the most superficial sports-movie pleasures are canceled out by the constant mugging, and by volleyball sequences so ineptly pieced together they could almost pass for experimental. The Iron Ladies imparts wisdom about the true meaning of sportsmanship, the true meaning of teamwork, and the value of tolerance, culminating in a drag-queen disco-dance number with a chorus that translates, "All I ask for is acceptance." If anyone out there missed that rudimentary lesson, Thongkonthun spells it out in capital letters.