‘Fire Island’ Review: Joel Kim Booster’s Lively Gay Rom-Com Puts the Pride in ‘Pride and Prejudice’
Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticIt’s a gross oversimplification of Jane Austen’s gift to suggest that her novels reduce to heteronormative matchmaking exercises, though all six end with their heroines getting hitched. (Austen herself never wed.
Make of that what you will.) Gay movies have their formulas, too, few of which end in marriage. Exasperatingly, the vast majority center on one of three plots: the coming-out story, the in-love-with-my-straight-buddy dead-end romance and the coping-with-AIDS downer.
So right off the bat, there’s something fresh about “Fire Island,” a saucy queer ensemble comedy from comedian-cum-screenwriter Joel Kim Booster about looking for Mr.
Right in the spot where gay men flee to find no-strings fun, sun and sex. Taking a page from “Clueless,” Booster had the bright idea to update a key Austen classic, putting the gay Asian pride in “Pride and Prejudice” — where nothing of the sort ever existed before — with the help of “Spa Night” director Andrew Ahn.
