Fire Island (2022)
Directed by Andrew Ahn
A group of queer best friends gather in the Fire Island Pines for their annual week of love and laughter. However, desires, dramas, drink and drugs push their bonds to the limits.
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8 films that influenced Fire Island
What critics say influenced Fire Island
The first and only hint that Fire Island is inspired by the works of Jane Austen is a quick shot of a copy of Pride and Prejudice on Noah’s (Booster) nightstand.
Summer is here, and the ideal LGBTQ film to satisfy any hot weather lethargy or romantic yearnings has arrived in "Fire Island," a multicultural gay rom-com set in the iconic enclave, The Pines —often referred to as America's first lavender town— with a modern updating of Jane Austen's classic "Pride and Prejudice."
The Pitch: Right from the jump, thanks to the voiceover of Noah (Joel Kim Booster) and a carefully planted copy of Pride and Prejudice, Fire Island tells you what it’s going to be — a retelling of the Jane Austen classic tale, relocated to a place and time that Jane Austen would have had a very hard time imagining: the titular gay party mecca centered in the hamlets of Cherry Grove and Fire Island Pines.
“Fire Island” is loosely inspired by Jane Austen’s 1813 novel “Pride and Prejudice,” but the movie is bound to become its own kind of classic for how it vibrantly depicts the real Fire Island’s hookup culture and the families by choice who flock to the island for fun and pleasure-seeking.
There are occasional heartbreaks and other relationships that falter in this tale, which announces its inspiration from Pride and Prejudice with its opening narration.
And yet — in shades of the film’s inspiration, Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” — their tender, open-hearted diversions feed every corner of this romping rom-com.
As a reworking of a Jane Austen novel, Fire Island can’t match Amy Heckerling’s instant-classic Clueless (though Kim Booster does, at one point, quote it lovingly).
Like its predecessors, think “Clueless” does “Queer as Folk,” “Fire Island” is ultimately a friendship love story wrapped inside a sexy matchmaking romp.
There’s also fun to be had from Fire Island being almost as knowing and self-referential about rom-coms as Scream is about horror, with the characters referencing the Austen-inspired Clueless (pulling out those rolling with the homies hand moves at point) and Noah praising Will by saying “you Legally Blonded him”.
Taking a page from “Clueless,” Booster had the bright idea to update a key Austen classic, putting the gay Asian pride in “Pride and Prejudice” — where nothing of the sort ever existed before — with the help of “Spa Night” director Andrew Ahn.
The gold standard for contemporary riffs on Jane Austen remains Amy Heckerling’s supremely witty Clueless .
On a purely structural basis, its story is a little too reverential to the original novel in a way that, for example, Clueless ’s spin on Emma wasn’t.
Partially inspired by Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice , Fire Island (2022) is a romantic comedy that celebrates all the messiness of friendship and romance.
This is a period referenced deliberately since screenwriter and star Joel Kim Booster ( Sunnyside ) uses Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice as the template for this story.
In “Fire Island,” a riff of Jane Austen’s “Pride & Prejudice” written by and starring Joel Kim Booster, Ahn has likely found that moment in a bitingly hilarious yet earnestly warm approach to modern romance.
Booster plays Noah, sort of Jane Austen’s “Emma” transplanted to “Pride & Prejudice.”
In Andrew Ahn’s LGBTQ rom-com Fire Island, writer and star Joel Kim Booster affectionately takes Jane Austen to task on her maxim, reconfiguring Pride & Prejudice for men who neither have fortunes nor want wives.
Part contemporary spin on Pride & Prejudice and part travelogue for the island’s real-life gay mecca known as the Pines, Fire Island never leaves any doubt as to whether its variation on Elisabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy are destined eventually to get together.
Booster plays Noah, sort of Jane Austen’s “Emma” transplanted to “Pride & Prejudice.”
On a purely structural basis, its story is a little too reverential to the original novel in a way that, for example, Clueless ’s spin on Emma wasn’t.
Her novels, literary studies in parody, burlesque and irony mixed with social commentary, have enjoyed second lives in everything from “Clueless,” an update of “Emma” set in Beverly Hills, and the self-explanatory “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.”
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They're joined by a cast that includes Margaret Cho and Conrad Ricamora ("How to Get Away With Murder"), in merely the latest attempt (see "Clueless" and "Bridget Jones's Diary") to dress up Austen in a more contemporary package.
It’s impossible to predict when something will stand the unforgiving test of time, but I’m confident that Fire Island earns itself a place among the Austenian ranks of Clueless and Bridget Jones’s Diary.
Anyone even remotely familiar with Pride And Prejudice , or Bridget Jones’s Diary for that matter, can guess what happens next.
Yet it’s also impossible to resist a movie that uses “Legally Blonde” as a verb and in which two men adorably bond over Alice Munro short stories.
The bond between the guys is at is the heart of this R-rated movie and helps anchor the raunchier and lighter “Legally Blonde” moments.
With all due respect to But I’m A Cheerleader and rather less respect to Love, Simon , queer audiences haven’t seen themselves reflected much in a genre that, at least in its heyday, defined Hollywood’s mainstream and reinforced heteronormative sociocultural standards.
Fire Island instantly belongs into the bucket of new rom-coms that break the mold, from Bridesmaids , to Crazy Rich Asians , and now this.