Jordan Firstman’s debut feature film Club Kid follows Peter, a queer New York party promoter who unexpectedly discovers he has a 9-year-old son named Arlo after the child’s mother dies by suicide. While the movie vividly explores unhinged hedonism and queer club culture, it has faced backlash from critics branding it “conservative” for showing a protagonist who turns his back on personal decadence to embrace family responsibility.
One of the things that makes cinema compelling is how layered stories become when a film connects deeply with audiences. Chasing down a movie’s inner meaning often leads into unexpected territory. Jordan Firstman’s ebullient first feature presents a straightforward premise on the surface, yet it carries significantly more weight.
Firstman stars as Peter, a downtown party promoter living an existence of unhinged hedonism who learns he fathered a child during a random three-way sexual encounter years prior. The 9-year-old boy, Arlo, arrives from London with a chaperone after his mother commits suicide. Dropped onto Peter like a load of bricks, the sudden parental responsibility forces a tentative relationship to form between the dissolute man-child and the sweet, curly-haired boy.
What Drives the Film
- Firstman’s directorial debut examines how a hedonistic party promoter discovers a desire to care for someone besides himself.
- The film immerses viewers in the frantic reality of queer nightlife, featuring cocaine and ketamine binges, shade-throwing revels, and gender-flipping transgression.
- Critics have split over the narrative arc, with some arguing that a queer character abandoning party culture for domestic fatherhood leans into conservative ideology.
At its core, the drama between Peter and Arlo is authentic and fully felt, echoing familiar cinematic territory seen in films like About a Boy and Big Daddy. Yet what makes Club Kid singular is its broader look at party culture. Firstman plunges the audience directly into the tumult and lived-in detail of queer club spaces, highlighting the cathartic rush of drugged-out insolence and heightened erotic excitement.
Party culture has served as a core expression of queer freedom since the earliest days of gay liberation, with disco roots tracing back to early ’70s underground clubs. Peter’s work organizing these events operates as a business while retaining an underground ethos.
However, Firstman is not merely celebrating this environment. The frantic nightbloom revels signify more than just a specific New York scene; they represent a larger snapshot of what global party culture has become over the past six decades.
From the disco age and industrial dance clubs of the ’80s to the raves of the ’90s and contemporary underground spaces like Basement, modern society has remained a culture on the prowl for 60 years.
In Club Kid, the film itself begins to question whether this is how people should live. That questioning has generated a backlash, with a chorus of voices damning the movie as a conservative parable that Nancy Reagan could love.
That conservative slur misses the mark because Firstman emerged directly from this exact scene. He does not approach the subject with puritanical or moralistic judgment. Instead, he captures the honest vibrancy of nightlife alongside its darker undercurrents. The party that never stops may be rooted in community, but it is driven just as deeply by the enticement of getting high on oneself.
That hidden seduction represents the thrill, beauty, and potential lie of modern party culture. The film suggests that while the party does not necessarily need to stop, audiences might benefit from questioning what sustained hedonism ultimately does to the human spirit. Firstman’s feature insists on asking difficult questions about a lifestyle long treated as unquestioned salvation.
