Directed by Andrew Ahn
Written by Joel Kim Booster
Starring: Joel Kim Booster, Bowen Yang, Conrad Ricamora
MPAA Rating: R
Runtime: 105 minutes
Available to watch on Hulu, June 3

by Ryan Smillie, Staff Writer

Back in my day, you could always count on a steady stream of two genres of movies: high-school-set literary adaptations and low-budget gay comedies. If I can extrapolate my gay millennial experience across a generation, we spent a lot of time watching Ten Things I Hate About You, Eating Out, and anything similar to either that we could find. Presumably raised on many of the same movies, director Andrew Ahn and writer Joel Kim Booster have managed to resurrect and synthesize these genres with Fire Island, their charming adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, now set in the famous gay vacation spot.

And Pride and Prejudice lends itself to a gay adaptation extremely well, the social conventions of the Regency Era maybe just slightly more complicated than those of the 21st century homosexual. The Bennet family unit is replaced with a chosen family of former servers – Kim Booster’s Noah and Bowen Yang’s Howie taking the place of Elizabeth and Jane Bennet, Margaret Cho filling in for both parents, and Matt Rogers, Tomás Matos, and Torian Miller rounding out the family like the younger Bennet sisters. Tea is no longer dandelion, but the start to the night’s revelry, and the bad cold that waylays Jane becomes a hangover that finds Howie sleeping in a bathtub. And the class conflict present throughout Austen’s novel translates on multiple levels – both in the snide comments and job titles bandied about and through the various brands of Speedos and underwear on display. 

But it’s not only the entertaining depictions of Regency society that have helped Pride and Prejudice endure for two centuries – it’s the romance. James Scully’s Charlie makes a decent stand-in for Mr. Bingley, and Yang gets to stretch a bit more dramatically than he does on SNL as their relationship hits the necessary roadblocks. But as befalls their counterparts in the book, Howie and Charlie’s romance takes a backseat to the animosity between their two friends – now Noah and Will (Conrad Ricamora). One of Off-Broadway’s recent too-hot Seymour Krelborns, Ricamora is appropriately haughty-seeming yet appealing as Fire Island’s Mr. Darcy. Noah and Will’s relationship follows a familiar arc, but Kim Booster is smart not to stray too far from the source material – Austen got it right the first time with Elizabeth and Darcy!

Ahn and Kim Booster are sure to include callbacks to previous Pride and Prejudice adaptations, with mixed results. A rain-drenched confrontation recalls Joe Wright’s 2005 film, while any jump into the pool has a chance of bringing Colin Firth’s dip into the lake in Andrew Davies’s BBC miniseries. Both welcome sights, to be sure, but they left me wondering what impression Fire Island will make. Will the Gen Z Pride and Prejudice adaptation reference Fire Island, or will they go back to the same rain scenes and lake dives? Similarly, the film falters a bit in its allusions to some of its comedic predecessors. Explicit references to Clueless, My Cousin Vinny, and Legally Blonde are delightful – and let’s be real, a frequent part of gay conversation – but they leave little room for the film to find a voice of its own. 

There’s a tension in the film between hitting the beats of Austen’s story and simply observing life on Fire Island. Ahn and Kim Booster prove to be adept in their depictions of gay friendship, vacation romance, and underwear parties – not to mention the magical atmosphere of Fire Island – but their perceptive filmmaking can feel constrained by a predetermined, though entertaining, plot. And that’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy it; it’s an extremely fun movie, and I loved seeing a timeless novel transplanted to a milieu that’s more familiar to me. But that the details feel so right can make you wonder how they could’ve explored something outside of Austen’s plot. 

Composed mostly of comedians, the cast finds humor throughout the script while also proving themselves capable of handling Fire Island’s more dramatic turns. But the one to watch here is director Andrew Ahn, who in a few short years has managed to build an impressive filmography centered around the experience of sensitive, queer Asian-American characters. Fire Island is both lighter and larger than his previous films, Spa Night and Driveways, but it retains Ahn’s authentic emotional grounding and low-key yet elegantly-composed images. It’s a smart combination to pair an effortlessly funny queer cast with a respected queer independent filmmaker, and I’m excited to see what’s next for Ahn.

As a teenager, the novelty of seeing a plot from classic literature play out in a high school never wore off. I think it’s safe to say that Fire Island is the first movie I’ve seen as an adult that gives me that same feeling. It’s Jane Austen – but set in a place that I’ve been to with my friends! Sprinkle in a dash of mid-2000s gay comedies, and it’s like my high school viewing has grown up with me. Fire Island might not be the Clueless for my 30s, but it’s a least a new She’s the Man.