Dir: Andrew Ahn. Starring: Joel Kim Booster, Bowen Yang, Matt Rogers, Margaret Cho, Conrad Ricamora, James Scully, Zane Phillips. 105 minutes.
What’s more radical: reimagining the canon or getting rid of it altogether? That’s the lingering question of Fire Island, a queer, modern-day update of Pride and Prejudice – one which, in its very first scene, dismisses Jane Austen’s marriage plot as “hetero nonsense”. The romcom, written by and starring comedian Joel Kim Booster, doesn’t quite make the most of its conceit. 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.
