Opening your film with a certified Rihanna banger is a good omen.
Now — on paper, there's every reason to be wary of Club Kid, one of those manchild-must-grow-up-when-a-cute-kid-shows-up kinds of stories. Peter (I Love LA's Jordan Firstman, making his feature directorial debut), is a gay, washed-up New York City club promoter shocked to learn he's the father of a 10-year-old British kid, Arlo (Reggie Absolom, very cute and very good). The kid's mother has died and now he's been left in Peter's care. Cue Peter being changed for the better, or so it's supposed to go.
That's kind of how it goes. Peter and Arlo bond over meaningful moments teetering on the edge of twee — at one point they play piano together while singing Ethel Cain's "Thoroughfare," as the camera pulls back from the apartment to reveal a beautiful twilit shot of the cityscape — and Peter is forced to do some adulting he'd actively been avoiding via a self-destructive hard-partying lifestyle.
But crucially and mercifully, the Big Daddy-esque premise is only one slice of Club Kid's ambitions, which are evident from the very first scene and the clever deployment of that Riri track. Peter and his raucous crew of queer party animals pile into a cab far too small to (legally) fit them all. While they drunkenly scream along to the Bajan pop queen's saucy quips about her own sexual prowess, the camera does several 360-degree rotations around the inside of the overstuffed car, juxtaposing the group's intimate exuberance with the soberingly unfazed driver who's just doing his job.
What's great about this scene, and a fateful clubbing sequence that immediately follows, is its astute observation of nightlife dynamics. Peter's very clearly the star around which everyone else orbits, and he projects a particular brand of detached cool that comes with being the "in" for skipping a party's entry line. This eclectic, tight-knit community of revelers (gays, theys, dolls, etc.) basks in the seductive glow of pre-pandemic millennial nostalgia. They're in the confident throes of the night's promise, experiencing that kinetic rush before things really pop off.
Soon enough, Club Kid will jump ahead about a decade and sober up narratively, though not too much. When Arlo first arrives fresh off the plane from England, Peter's going-out lifestyle is as consistent and excessive as it was in his younger days, though now he's doing it in a more ravaged and less resilient thirtysomething body. He's also selling drugs to his friends and acquaintances in the club scene to supplement his faltering promoter "career."
"You ever just lose, like, 10 years?" he quips, bemused.
Firstman embraces this prickly tension and balances his brand of arch, twisted humor with dramatic real-world stakes. Arlo's pivotal in setting Peter on a different life path, but he's not a crutch for the plot to lean on. It helps that he's written not as cloying, but as a legit cool kid — a budding DJ with the music tastes of a Gen X-millennial cusper (Cocteau Twins, Elliott Smith) who fits in well with Peter's chosen family for better and for worse. That family is made up of dynamic characters who bring energy, chaos, and heart to the proceedings, including friends Saffron (Saturn Risin9) and Devon (Nigil Whyte), as well as Nicky (Eldar Isgandarov), Peter's sweet but aimless roommate.
Peter's a recognizably messy human at the center of this bustling ensemble — a non-linear work-in-progress who continues to rack up neglected or mishandled responsibilities and make questionable choices that put his custody of Arlo in jeopardy. Firstman plays the role vulnerably, imbuing the character with a self-loathing amplified by Arlo's presence. Some of the movie's best scenes come out of Peter's frankness about those insecurities.
Here, too, is where Club Kid zigs when it could've easily and predictably zagged — when Peter eventually begins to address those insecurities, there are still necessary (and believable) consequences. To its credit, club culture isn't the villain. And a near-perfect ending emphasizes the idea that outgrowing certain aspects of your life doesn't necessarily mean completely abandoning the community fostered within those parts, especially if it continues to show up for you in other ways, however imperfectly.
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