(Or maybe it’s the Ketamine.) Directed by Andrew Ahn (“Spa Night,” “Driveways”) and starring “Saturday Night Live” darling Bowen Yang opposite Booster, “Fire Island” marries the promise of the queer comedy boom with the artistic arrival of Asian American cinema. But under the Day-Glo sheen of the carless beach town filled with glistening shirtless queers, it all feels genuinely dreamy.
Though the vision was all Booster’s, the love that went into “Fire Island” emanates from every player.Ī true ensemble piece, the movie is filled with the joy and camaraderie of that cheesiest of queer epithets - chosen family.
The stand-up comedian makes a splashy debut as both a formidable literary force and an appealing leading man in “ Fire Island,” his first feature film as screenwriter, and hopefully the first of many. To the elite group of authors of pithy maxims, Jane Austen and Cyndi Lauper, we may add a third ingenious scribe: Joel Kim Booster. Though Jane Austen only wrote one of them, there are actually a few truths universally acknowledged: That a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife, and girls just wanna have fun.
