★★★½ (3½ out of 4)
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away—I’m talking the queer New York club scene in 2016—a gay club promoter named Peter Green (Jordan Firstman) and five glitter-covered friends cram into an Uber, pass around a bottle, hang out the windows and sing along to Rihanna’s “Sex with Me.” It’s quite an invitation.
Firstman, first time out as a director and doing himself proud, keeps his camera swirling in a way “Goodfellas”-era Scorsese would appreciate, as the party peeps hit the dance floor to an eardrum-busting thump-bump-thump. Peter, fueled by his usual blend of coke and ketamine, starts grinding so hard on a dude that Leonora (Paris Petitjean), a Brit on a Big Apple lark, joins in. Messy sex, sure, except Peter learns 10 years later that the thump-bump-thump resulted in Leonora having a son named Arlo. That’s when Peter learns from her friend Edison (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) that Leonora has died by suicide. Before checking out, she asked Edison to take Arlo to Peter if anything happened to her.
Deserves a place with the year’s best movies—it got me good.
It’s as if Dr. Seuss had written “La Cage Aux Folles” for tweens weaned on trauma and club music. The laughs sometimes intrude on the tears as Peter, now a washed-up party promoter, decides to have a go at raising Arlo (Reggie Absolom), the 10-year-old son he never knew he had. Someone call child services!
How’s that for a bedtime story? Nothing about “Club Kid” should work and yet almost everything does. That’s how solid a job Firstman delivers wearing four hats as writer-director-producer-star. I had feared one of those smug, intolerably enlightened treatises virtue coded as a heart warmer. But that’s not Firtstman’s MO as an American actor, writer and comedian who first gained wide attention for his offbeat Instagram comedy during the pandemic, moving on as an actor in the HBO series, “I Love LA,” and the 2023 black comedy, “Rotting in the Sun, playing a heightened version of himself. His specialty: outrageous characters, self-parody and skewering vanity.
What no one ever expected of Firstman is sincerity. And yet it’s here in “Club Kid” minus any cloying sentiment. There’s not an ounce of Hollywood BS in this movie. We’ll never know what might have happened if Peter was asked to step in when Arlo was still a baby. But the rapport Peter develops with this boy, who’s nearly as smartass as he is a constant delight, is tempered by the fact that neither is good at hiding the buried terror they feel about living.
Arlo, played with spark and sensitivity by Absolom, relates strongly to the NY LGBTQ party culture and Peter’s friends, including his fellow promoter (a dazzling Cara Delevingne), his downstairs neighbor (a fabulous Colleen Camp), his new conquest (a very hot Diego Calva) who is concerningly also Arlo’s therapist, and party girls Miss Benny, Alaska Riley and Saturn Risin9. The scene-stealer supreme is Eldar Isgandarov as the so-called “queer philosopher” whose byplay with Camp deserves its own movie or at least a sitcom.
I rush to point out that “Club Kid” is not one of those movies where a cute kid with a Brit accent offers the kind of love that makes Peter see the error of his wicked ways. Father and son bump heads quite a bit and poor decisions are a Peter specialty. For a quick minute he lets Arlo wear his fave t-shirt that reads “I love Björk and bareback.” Still, Peter does ease up on the 24/7 debauchery, the drug dealing, the time lost as a blackout drunk. Not enough for the courts to grant him custody of Arlo but enough to keep this unique relationship in play.
“Club Kid” is the kind of movie that grows on you, the kind that keeps you rooting for a nontraditional father and son who’ll always be chasing an elusive happy ending. There aren’t many movies this hilarious and heartfelt, this ready to stick with its harsher truths. Firstman’s “Club Kid” deserves a place with the year’s best movies. It got me good.