Fire Island

Fairly simple, sweet story about the confusion surrounding self worth and loving yourself. Laughed out loud about five times, mostly at Bowen Yang. My construction dude straight husband said "Pretty corny, but I liked it." Love that guy. I loved the movie, thought it was adorable.

I found this in a list of award winning films and when I saw Joel Kim Booster is in it I had to watch. I've been a fan after watching Loot, he is always funny and a great actor, comedian and representative of the asian and LGBTQ+ community.

The film itself is very well written, dialogue and story, and every character presented in a way that gives a very clear picture of who they are. As a non binary biological man I love another addition to the list of films that represent the stories of the community in a positive light.

I highly recommend it if you want to have lighthearted fun with also deep and interesting characters and depth in the story.

Beat for beat adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. I am somewhat thick in picking these things up, but this was so in your face I got it within the first 10 minutes.

A nice updated take on a classic tale. Per usual "Mr Darcy" is captivatingly angsty prickly sort with a mushy core. A fun watch.

I struggled with the first hour. It amped up the current-day gay cliches to extreme proportions. The dialogue was solely based around gay men, with gay personalities, talking about being gay, and discussing gay issues which left no space for anything else. On top of that you've got the lead character narrating throughout the entire movie about how we as the audience should feel about gay life. There was a lot of telling not showing.

However, in the moments when the plot positioned the social commentary to the background and had a chance to actually explore gay issues by seeing these men in various situations, as superficial as the exploration may have been, ultimately led to a well-meaning warm-hearted place. There were moments of genuine insight, and occasional laugh out loud moments peppered throughout, and Margaret Cho will never not be a delight to watch.

However the outcome felt a little undercooked and reliant on stereotyped one liners that often didn't land and an idea of what a gay screenwriter thinks what gay men want to see. I would have loved a high comedy version of the HBO TV series 'Looking' type experience where no cliches are allowed and all characters have depth and dimension. This exploration felt a little cynical, mean and lazy in parts.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." The opening words of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" and this script is a gay spin off of that novel. This is a mostly Asian caste that goes to Fire Island for an annual week's vacation. Enroute they repeat one of the island's mantras, "No Fems, No Fats, No Asians", their group mostly fits that stereotype.

The script isn't perfect, but it's adequate. It's mostly drama school trained actors and it's funny. I enjoyed this more than "Queer as Folk" (2022). Not an exact match up of characters to the Jane Austen novel, but it's close enough.