Club Kid
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Rating: R
Run Time: 2 hours 1 minute
Stars: Jordan Firstman, Reggie Absolom
Writer/Director: Jordan Firstman
Reviewed at the Toronto International Film Festival
There are times, gentle reader, when you just have to trust your film critic.
For the first 15 minutes or so of the family drama Club Kid, you’ll be subjected to the throbbing, ear-splitting beats of a horrendously trendy New York City dance club. Gyrating people will scream indecipherable things to each other. The lights will strobe like the kaleidoscope from Hell. More drugs will be consumed onscreen than at every Grateful Dead concert between 1967 and 1974. (It’s quite possible someone snorts cocaine off a woman’s body. I’m not sure. I closed my eyes for a while.)
And you will meet the singularly least-likeable movie protagonist in memory: Peter (Jordan Firstman), a Manhattan dance party impresario who hires the DJ, books the venue, sells the onsite drugs, and generally makes certain only the very best people – and by that I mean the most beautiful, most wealthy, and least inhibited – get in the front door. On the big night, making the rounds to ensure everyone is having what passes for pleasure in these parts, Peter guzzles down as much booze; snorts, swallows, and injects as many drugs; and engages in as much indiscriminate sex as one human possibly can.
Are we having fun yet? No, we’re not. At least I’m not. I wouldn’t blame you for walking out – or alternatively lingering by the concession stand a bit before venturing to your theater seat.
You could do that, but then you would miss out on the full impact of what ultimately morphs into a miraculously big-hearted, insistently sweet-natured tale tracing the transformative nature of parenthood.
That’s because after one particularly excessive bacchanal, a long-ago acquaintance turns up at Peter’s apartment door with a 10-year-old boy named Arlo (wistful Reggie Absolom) – the result of a one-night tryst Peter barely remembers. The boy’s mother has died suddenly in London, and now, well, Congratulations, Dad!
Peter, of course, tries to weasel his way out of his responsibility, and the kid seems less than happy with the situation, as well. Gradually, as they visit record stores, talk about music, and generally absorb the gritty vibe that is lower Manhattan together, their comfort level grows – as does their fondness for each other.
At this point – sex, drugs, and thumping music aside – Club Kid looks and feels a lot like a standard-issue Hollywood love-conquers-all, feel-good fable. But Firstman – who writes and directs besides starring in the main role – isn’t about to let us off that easy. The fact is, Peter is manifestly unfit to be anyone’s guardian: Although he cautions his friends to lay off their uninhibited behavior when Arlo’s around, he himself is still steeped in the worst habits of his old life. Before long, it becomes unclear just who here is the parent and who is the child. (Stupidly, Peter has simply taken Arlo in without notifying any immigration or social authorities, so there is no external monitoring of him in his new role, other than from his equally clueless club buddies.)
Eventually, Arlo’s tagalong life lands him a gig as New York’s youngest DJ, a role Peter at first sees as a bonding experience but soon discovers is closer to child endangerment. As he drags the boy from an out-of-control dance floor rave, reality begins to click in his addled brain. Miraculously, the audience, so recently repelled by this entitled loser, cheers him on as the weight and wonderfulness of parenthood begin to infuse his being.
But the realization may have come too late: Inevitably, the authorities get wind of Peter’s informal adoption arrangement – resulting in an emotionally devastating scene in which there are no villains, only people who want the best for a little boy adrift in the world.
Writing and directing his first feature film, Firstman delivers a gut-punch of emotion that is endurable only because he’s equally comfortable allowing his characters to laugh and, at times, fail hilariously.
The film’s matter-of-fact depiction of New York’s queer culture – and Firstman’s clear affection for many of its more outrageous adherents – may make Club Kid a terminal turn-off for many. But for the more adventurous filmgoer, the payoff is a resolution that makes the difficult but wise observation that while some might not be cut out for parenthood, that in no way precludes them from loving a child, or being loved by one.
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