Critic Reviews

Daughters of the Sexual Revolution: The Untold Story of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders is a truly engrossing film, one that balances the big picture and the small one.

The tone is unabashedly partial, yet the women are such entertaining company it’s hard to mind.

Were the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, in some rollicking sex-positive way, an intrinsic part of the feminist revolution? Or did they represent one step forward and one high kick back? You could make the case either way, but the film pushes the clean and forceful — if highly ironic — argument that the Cheerleaders were nothing more or less than empowered entertainers who seized control of their sexuality and, in doing so, advanced the liberation of women.

Mostly, this is a whirlwind trip through the origins of a phenomenon, with an eye toward explaining how America could find these ladies at once sexy and wholesome. The answer? Hey man, it was the ‘70s.