‘Big Boys’: BFI Flare Review

Dir/scr: Corey Sherman. US. 2023. 90mins

A 14-year-old boy navigates his burgeoning sexuality in this sensitive coming-of-age drama, which relies heavily on the significant appeal of emerging lead actor Isaac Krasner. He anchors this small-scale story in authentic, often painfully raw — but never oversold — adolescent emotion,  embodying the vulnerability and fear of a character on the cusp of life-changing realisations. Making its debut in BFI Flare, Big Boys should be received with warmth by an LGBTQ+ audience, and should strike a chord with anyone who can identify with these first tentative steps to embracing one’s true self. 

Favours nuanced realism over high drama

Jamie (Krasner) is looking forward to his camping trip in the Californian woods (the film shot at Lake Arrowhead, in San Bernadino County) with his older brother Will (Taj Cross, from Hulu series PEN15 which also deals with the messiness of adolescence) and 20-something cousin Allie (Dora Madison). Opening scenes see him fastidiously packing, worrying about such tactical concerns as toilet paper and a first aid kit, and are a neat shorthand to the thoughtful teenager he is. 

The innate maturity Jamie has in the practical aspects of life – he’s also a budding chef – does not extend, however, to how he handles his emotions. On the cusp of adolescence and assailed by both hormones and the narrow definitions of masculinity he has grown up with, Jamie is absolutely not prepared for the feelings that arise when he meets Allie’s boyfriend, Dan (David Johnson III). 

Initially annoyed that Dan will be gatecrashing the camping trip, Jamie’s attraction to the muscular, gruff-voiced older man is immediately obvious in his nervous chatter, the biting of his lip, the hidden glances (not to mention the angelic choral refrain on Will Wiesenfeld’s low-key soundtrack which chimes whenever Dan appears in Jamie’s line of sight.) Writer/director Corey Sherman’s understated screenplay, inspired by his own experiences as a young gay man, favours nuanced realism over high drama.

Jamie is increasingly torn between his feeling for Dan — who further endears himself to the youngster by complimenting his cooking and calling the two of them “The Big Boys” when they team up for fireside board games — and his ingrained idea of masculinity. The latter is largely personified by his blunt older brother, who encourages Jamie to join him in “hooking up” with a pair of girls they meet on the campground. “You’re 14, you need to get some ass,” he admonishes. Will has no idea, of course, that Jamie is fantasising about Dan, in sweetly innocent dream sequences involving himself as a bearded adult (played here by Jack De Sanz) indulging in shoulder massages and romantic dinners for two.

Despite Will’s eye-rolling (but entirely plausible) demonstrations of toxic teenage masculinity, there is a thread of compassion and respect running throughout Big Boys. Interactions between Jamie and his intended “hook up’’ Erika (Marion Van Cuyck, also from PEN15) are particularly well-handled, with Jamie demonstrating both concern for Erika in the situation, and some great comedy timing as he pretends to be drunk in order to swerve any intimacy. Shrewd editing from Erik Vogt-Nilsen also helps the film hit some genuinely funny beats along the way. 

Similarly, while Jamie’s feelings for Dan are resolutely unrequited, the older man handles a couple of potentially awkward situations with compassion and understanding. Despite the general unwitting blindness to Jamie’s emotional tumult and Will’s typical older brother bullying, his is never made to feel different because of who he is; whether that be his sensitivity, his weight, or his sexuality. 

And that’s the most refreshing element of Big Boys; its front and centre placement and warm treatment of an overweight, confused-but-likely-gay adolescent protagonist who would normally be relegated to the position of sidekick or comic relief. Jamie is simply an ordinary teenage boy struggling to find out who he might be; that the film gives him the space to do so is something to be admired, and appreciated.