“Fire Island” tips its homage-wielding hand early with a verbal and visual shout-out to Pride and Prejudice.
After a quick appearance by that novel, narrator Noah (Joel Kim Booster) quotes its author, Jane Austen, then dismisses her lines as a heteronormative ode to marriage and monogamy.
Noah has no time for any of that nonsense; he’s late for the boat to the titular gay mecca, where he will join his friends at the house of their lesbian den mother, Erin.
“Get on the boat, bitch!” yells Howie (Bowen Yang), the friend whom Noah, in a nod to the teenage sex comedies of my adolescence, will try to help get laid during this excursion.
This is one of the many dramas—small and capital D varieties—that populate this entertaining and heartfelt romantic comedy.
“No fatties, no femmes, and no Asians,” someone says, describing a mantra seen in some gay spaces.
I’m glad someone mentions it, and that the film ruminates on the real and perceived shallow optics inherent in that statement.
When I went to Fire Island for the first time over 25 years ago, no fewer than eight people stopped to explicitly tell me I was too fat to be there.