Film

Fire Island

Name: Fire Island
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Released: 2022
Cast: Joel Kim Booster, Bowen Yang, Margaret Cho, Conrad Ricamora, James Scully

Comedy

Fire Island is a comedy about queer friendship and desire set during one week in the Pines. It's warm and funny, laced with real vulnerability, and moves between romantic comedy beats and genuine examination of how bodies, class, and aging reshape relationships. Made for anyone who's felt caught between wanting connection and protecting yourself.

TMDb rating

3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love a loose, affectionate ensemble comedy built on in-jokes, bickering friendships and a Pride-week romance that borrows the bones of Pride and Prejudice, a bit like a sunnier, queerer Clueless.

Skip it if you want a tight plot or a steady stream of gags; much of the runtime lingers on hangouts, shifting moods and friends talking things through.

What it asks of you: Around ninety minutes of unhurried hanging out, with laughs arriving in bursts and a tender, sometimes melancholy undertow you have to sit with rather than skim past.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Summer I Turned Pretty2022

A ensemble teen romance about desire, friendship, and the weight of choice during a pivotal summer. It has the same breezy-then-serious tonal balance and genuine affection for its characters' contradictions.

But The central love triangle is fairly conventional, and some will find the aspirational beach-house setup more fantasy than grounded comedy.

Looking2014

An HBO series about gay men in San Francisco navigating relationships, sex, and friendship with intelligence and humour. Same specificity of gay social life, similar willingness to show desire as complicated rather than triumphant.

But It moves slowly and ends ambiguously; many found the pacing frustrating, and it lacks Fire Island's comedic lightness.

Schitt's Creek2015

A show about a chosen family learning to live together and support each other through embarrassment and heartbreak. Both find comedy in vulnerability and both treat queer relationships as normal, not sensational.

But It's a much longer commitment, and its fish-out-of-water premise is very different from Fire Island's insider perspective.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Fire Island

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Boys in the Band2020

Fire Island is a direct spiritual successor; both use comedy as a container for examining how gay men love and hurt each other, and both were made in their respective eras by people inside the culture.

Mart Crowley's play about eight gay men gathering for a birthday party in 1968, adapted by Ryan Murphy with a contemporary cast. It's the skeleton key to Fire Island—the original template for queer ensemble comedy that doesn't flinch from desire, cruelty, and the ways friendship contains both.

But At fifty years old, some dialogue reads dated, and the film lingers on shame in ways that feel heavy compared to Fire Island's lighter touch. It's also a play, so it's talk-heavy and confined to one apartment.

Red, White & Royal Blue2023

A romantic comedy about two men from different worlds discovering connection. It has Fire Island's warmth and romantic optimism, with the same belief that queer love stories deserve to be fun and uncomplicated.

But It's sweeter and less willing to sit with messy realities; if you loved Fire Island's edge, this will feel like the sanitised version.

Everything Everywhere All at Once2022

A maximalist ensemble film about love, acceptance, and fighting for the people who matter. Bowen Yang gives a luminous performance, and it shares Fire Island's emotional generosity beneath the chaos.

But It's science fiction and surreal, wildly different in tone and scope; the connection might feel like a stretch if you want something in the same genre.

Everything Everywhere All at Once poster

Pose2018

A series about ballroom culture in 1980s New York with a huge queer cast and genuine affection for its characters' resilience and joy. It understands how chosen family sustains you and how desire entangles with survival.

But It's set in a very different era and deals with poverty and AIDS; it's far more serious, and some found the first season uneven.

Heartstopper2022

A show about young queer people discovering themselves and each other with genuine sweetness. Both are about how friendship and romance intertwine, and both believe queer joy is worth watching.

But It's aimed at teens and much more innocent; Fire Island's adult sexuality and cynicism are completely absent.

Bros2022

A comedy about adult gay men in New York negotiating sex, commitment, and what love means. Made by queer people, it has similar specificity and refusal to simplify its characters' desires.

But It's rougher and more explicitly sexual; some will find it tonally harsher, and it landed poorly with mainstream audiences.

One Day2024

A miniseries about two people whose lives intertwine across decades. Both examine how time and life changes reshape relationships, and both balance comedy with real sadness about growing apart.

But It's heterosexual and focuses on two people rather than a group; the settings and scope are entirely different.

Mulholland Drive2001

Both films use a compressed timeframe to show how desire reshapes reality, and both understand that comedy and genuine pain can occupy the same moment.

David Lynch's portrait of desire, delusion, and friendship in Los Angeles. Like Fire Island, it uses a week (or dream of a week) to examine how want distorts perception, and it finds dark comedy in how people lie to themselves and each other.

But It's surreal, non-linear, and deliberately obscure; if you want to understand what you're watching, this will frustrate you. It's also bleak where Fire Island is ultimately warm.

Weekend2011

Both are about queer men figuring out what they want in the company of other men, and both trust that showing vulnerability is as funny and important as making jokes.

A British indie about two men who meet at a gay bar and spend an intense weekend together in Nottingham. It's deeply queer and adult, moving between sex and conversation with real tenderness. Unlike Fire Island's group, it's intimate and observational, but shares the refusal to separate desire from emotional truth.

But It's slow, deliberately unglamorous, and ends quietly without resolution. There's no ensemble warmth or comedy; it's two people talking and fucking, which some will find boring and others devastatingly real.