Fire Island (2022)

Jack and I liked this romantic comedy, loosely based on Pride and Prejudice, the first feature with gay Asian males in leading roles. Five men, of modest means, vacation in the "gay Disneyland" Long Island, NY resort town of Fire Island, encountering racism and classism as they look for love and a good time. In gay Disneyland homophobia might be minimized, but other prejudices definitely rear their ugly heads.

Joel Kim Booster stars as Noah and wrote the script (originally a Quibi short and, I think, soon to be a TV series?) for himself and Bowen Yang, who plays Howie. Their travel mates are Matt Rogers, Tomas Matos, and Torian Miller. They meet James Scully, Conrad Ricamora, Nick Adams, Zane Phillips, and many more, while bunking at Margaret Cho's guesthouse. She stepped in to play the part after scheduling prevented someone (a man) from participating. 

Director Andrew Ahn, close friends with Booster and Yang, skillfully manages the pace between comedy, partying, and emotion.

Jay Wadley's jaunty score, streaming on Apple Music and elsewhere, is supplemented by many other tunes, listed here.

The movie is the only one to be granted an exception to the Bechdel Test (follow the link if you're not familiar with it). Alison Bechdel herself tweeted, “Okay, I just added a corollary: Two men talking to each other about the female protagonist of an Alice Munro story in a screenplay structured on a Jane Austen novel = pass.”

Cho was last blogged for Good on Paper and Wadley for Swan Song. Booster, Korean-born and raised by white American adoptive parents, has done a lot of acting and this is his feature screenwriting debut. Besides his 59 SNL episodes, Yang was very funny in eleven of Nora from Queens and much more. Rogers is currently in I Love That for You, among dozens of acting credits, and wrote ten episodes of The Other Two (Booster wrote one). Ricamora is best known for 82 episodes of How to Get Away with Murder. Matos, Miller, Scully, Adams, and Phillips are new to me.

You won't miss the opening with the actors singing the Searchlight Pictures theme. Do stick around for a voiceover during the closing credits.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are hot for this one, averaging 94%, while its audiences are cooler at 76. We watched it the first weekend of Pride Month, on June 3, on Hulu.