Fire Island | FILM REVIEW
By Arnold Wayne Jones
What a difference a generation – and medical advances – can make. More than 30 years ago, the seminal gay movie Longtime Companion opened with a sense of orgiastic abandon: A group of gay friends embrace their unabashed sexuality by ferrying to queer summer Mecca Fire Island, frolicking at unbridled, sweaty, molly-fueled tea dances, cruising other bikini-wearing studs and hooking up in the dunes with flagrant horniness. The next 90 minutes of that film, though, then portray the ravages of the then-rampaging AIDS epidemic. It’s a beautifully humane tragedy full of both empathy and rage, a movie every gay man knows (or should know) but which doesn’t enjoy the legacy it deserves because of its downbeat, political tone.
(From L-R): Margaret Cho, Tomas Matos, Bowen Yang, Joel Kim Booster, and Matt Rogers in the film FIRE ISLAND. Photo by Jeong Park. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2022 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved
So when the new hom(0)-rom-com Fire Island (which debuts June 3 on Hulu) opens with virtually the exact same establishing montages (helicopter shots of gayboys about to dock, overhead shots of throngs of half-naked partiers, flirtatious tracking shots of men strutting along wooded walkways), it’s impossible to ignore the probability that director Andrew Ahn and writer-star Joel Kim Booster know exactly what they are doing: They are reclaiming the images of an iconic gay drama for a world were PrEP, the “cocktail” and same-sex marriage rights have transformed the gay community … mostly (but not exclusively) for the better. The world of Fire Island is one of sexy bodies, romantic cliches … and NO disease (not even COVID!). It exists, happily, in the artificial twilight of skin-deep emotions, cheesy plot complications and tidily upbeat conclusions for all the characters we like (and humiliating sadness for those we don’t).
Which is to say, it’s awesome.
OK, so it’s not exactly “awesome,” but it does exude a sexy, post-lockdown energy that feels like a welcome relief after two years of quarantine. It is decidedly not Longtime Companion… or Moonlight, or Brokeback Mountain. Instead, Fire Island romps perkily through the garden of earthly delights previously relegated to heteronormative romances, joining that club while also subversively undermining it.
(From L-R): Matt Rogers, Bowen Yang and Tomas Matos Photo by Jeong Park. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2022 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved
The gay rom-com is nothing new, of course, but the sly uniqueness of Fire Island is the decision to simultaneously wallow in the eye-candy of ripped, youth-centric Millennial self-indulgence while also arguing for diversity and body positivity. The three main characters – hunky, shallow Noah (Joel Kim Booster), his Eyeore-like buddy Howie (Bowen Yang) and his fussy rival Will (Conrad Ricamora) – are all Asian, as is the de facto comic den mother, played by Margaret Cho; but while ethnicity factors into the plot briefly, it’s not the point: These people are friends… they are gay friends… but this is not a variation of the yellowploitation genre. Booster and Ahn aren’t making a cultural document that aims to be both woke and celebratory, as you could say a Crazy Rich Asians is… unless that culture is angsty 30-something, gig-economy gays. Its agenda, if any, is couched in its casualness. Don’t misunderstand: it definitely traffics in the predictable – characters include a rail-thin chulo drag queen; a sexless, bearish Black comic relief; and a bitchy, Botoxed, roided-up golddigger. But the friendships are from a varied group of types where white boys aren’t the enemy and some Asian guys are dicks.
(From L-R): Torian Miller, Bowen Yang, Margaret Cho, Tomas Matos and Joel Kim Booster in the film FIRE ISLAND. Photo by Jeong Park. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2022 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved
The plot hinges on people not saying things any normal person would in a similar situation because that would derail all the complications – but it also undercuts them with its quirky lightheartedness. I have to say, this is not something I was expecting from Ahn, whose first feature, Spa Night – a brooding drama about a closeted Korean teen working at a bathhouse – makes Longtime Companion look like a Bugs Bunny cartoon. He demonstrates effortlessness with the cotton candy plot, which involves (no surprise) a quintet of friends reuniting for what may be their last week together at their gay getaway. Promiscuous Noah has decided to keep his penis in his pants and instead dedicate his efforts at getting schlubby depressive Howie laid. There appears to be a prospect in Charlie (James Scully), a recently single doctor, but Charlie’s obnoxious rich buddies think Howie and company are beneath them (sadly, they are sorta right: they behave like assholes at a fancy party) which sparks some social dueling a la Revenge of the Nerds: Can Noah outfox the roadblocks erected by Will and Cooper (Nick Adams), while lightly pursuing daddy-in-training Dex (Zan Phillips)? But might Will not be the villain he seems?
That’s where the script goes off track. Will is less a hard-to-get romantic interest in the way of, say As Good As It Gets, than he is an outright humorless prig, whose sympathies come late and feel forced. Ricamora strives gamely to make him relatable, but the screenplay always goes for the easy gag in place of a character-driven motivation. You never really feel that Will and Noah would be right for each other, just as you don’t really dislike Dex as much as you’re supposed to when he turns out to be the “bad guy” everyone says he is.
No matter. There are too many snarky one-liners, too much joyously queer enthusiasm, too many sexy rippling abs to hold any animosity against the film. Yang reminds us why he’s such a charismatic presence on SNL, and Booster makes for a credible leading man, but the success owes as well to its decision to recast the imagery of Fire Island for froth, not death, with an inclusive cast where inclusivity is neither the gimmick nor the point. It’s the perfect kick-off to Pride Month and a shiny summer of cinema.