Fire Island on Hulu

[Faulkner]

Who watched the new movie on Hulu? It stars Joel Kim Booster, Bowen Yang, Conrad Ricamora, Matt Rogers, James Scully, Nick Adams, and Margaret Cho. It’s cute as a typical rom-com fantasy loosely based on Pride and Prejudice, which means you have turn your brain off to really enjoy it, but for all of its claims of diversity, it falls into a lot of the same traps of marginalizing its black and brown characters (and inadvertently centering the white gays the film tries to critique by making the clueless white doctor the prize):

Conrad Ricamora is delicious, though, and there are some insightful moments:

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[Vee]

I'm going to give it a watch for Pride month. I'm more interested in the Billy Eichner movie, but I do like Bowen Yang. (And they had Muna doing some of the music, and I dig Muna)

[Noel]

I downloaded it, but I haven't watched it yet. I did, however, watch this interview with Joel Kim Booster on Stephen Colbert:

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Edited June 8, 2022 by Noel

[Faulkner]

 

I’ll be interested in hearing what you both think. It seems to be somewhat polarizing in many ways.

[Vee]

Yeah, it got middling but decent enough reviews for me to give it a watch along with a lot of other stuff for Pride. I figure it's not hurting anyone to give it a shot.

[Faulkner]

Yeah, it’s a pretty breezy watch. Diverting for an evening. 

[Noel]

Oh, for sure. Not that I take critic ratings into too much consideration (after all, I LOVED '54' and the critics really hated it), but when I upload these things to my  PLEX, PLEX then generates the file information through IMBd, etc. and it looks like this. I am preferential on video resolution and audio and the only thing I do is convert files to HEVC mkv or mp4 for better picture quality. But, Rotten Tomatoes gives this movie 93%.

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[Vee]

The director's cut of 54 - suppressed for decades by the Weinsteins, who cut/reshot the movie immensely to remove the gay content and a lot more amorality and darkness written in by its gay writer-director - is now available on streaming. It's a much more worthwhile film (and includes a gay scene featuring AMC's Cameron Mathison, who was just starting on AMC at the time).

[Noel]

I wonder if that's the director's cut version I have. Ew. No, this file is 720p resolution. Oh! Sherry Stringfield is in this movie too! Yeah, I'm on the hunt for the director's cut version! Thanks for that info!

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[Vee]

If it's the 105 minute cut, it's probably the director's cut. But Amazon has it in 1080, of course. You can very easily search them for '54 director's cut'.

Edited June 8, 2022 by Vee

[yrfan1983]

My hubby and I turned off Fire Island 15 minutes in, after realizing we hadn't laughed once.  We had high hopes... we're in our 50s, so maybe we're not the right age demographic

[Faulkner]

I found the opening to be tough-going myself with the cliché, self-conscious, too-on-the-nose identity name-checking when they were on the ferry to Fire Island (I’m an older millennial), but I was laughing somewhat more often as the movie progressed. 

[Soapsuds]

I watched and turned it off too. I didn't like it!

[victoria foxton]

Everyone's plain dull. Sadly, i've seen worse. All those boujie queens gave me a stomach ache. At an hour and 45 mins. It felt a lot longer. If anyone's looking for superior gay movies. Classics like A Beautiful Thing or Stonewall (1995 ). Are worth a look.

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[Taoboi]

Thank you for the 54 Director's Cut tip.

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That said...thank you for this thread, Faulker. Birthday week and I've totally forgot about it. I am curious...especially since one of the actors is playing a gay God over on LEGACIES in a funny case of typecasting...but just haven't found the time. 

 

And oh how I miss Conrad on HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER...