By Robert St. Martin
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 7/21/23 – Screening early on Saturday, July 22, at Outfest Los Angeles, is Corey Sherman’s debut feature Big Boys (2023), a sweet, funny story about a 14-year-old overweight teenage boy whose sexual awakening is authentically portrayed. As the title suggested, the movie is built around two characters who are overweight, but Corey Sherman turns the “fat funny friend” trope on its head in this simple but well-scripted tale. When writer and director Corey Sherman was putting together Big Boys, he says that he never saw it as a celebration of bigger queer bodies, but more as an examination of a teenage boy’s unexpected crush on an older man who happens to be “chubby.” 14-year-old overweight Jamie (played by Isaac Krasner) who is a bit of a geek and verges on being shy around others. Whilst other boys his age talk about sports and girls, he is just obsessed with developing his culinary skills. Jamie comes across as a truly likeable youngster who tries to understand his own burgeoning sexual interests in a way that reflects the the experiences of many gay men when they were once that age.
Jamie (Isaac Krasner) is getting ready to go on his annual camping trip with his older brother Will (Taj Cross) who he tolerates and their twenty-something cousin Allie (Dora Madison) who is extremely fond of. However, Jamie’s mother reveals to him that only is Allie is now dating her new boyfriend Dan (David Johnson III) and that Dan is coming on the trip too. Jamie is not too happy about the idea of Dan accompanying them, but once they get to the campsite (which seems to be Lake Arrowhead), Jamie begins to warm up to Dan for reasons that even he does not understand. As he tries hard to win Dan’s friendship, Jamie’s awkwardness around Dan goes unnoticed by everyone, including Dan himself. He tries to impress Dan with his knowledge about cooking and even shares a drawing he sketches of Dan in a hammock. Meanwhile Jamie’s older brother Will teases him mercilessly, but Jamie takes it all in stride.
When Will suggests that they try to pick up some teenage girls at the campsite, Jamie goes along with Will’s antics, but it is both interesting and awkward how Jamie handles their night out on the prowl. Jamie is not sure about the delicacies of chatting up a girl, but he finds his own way of dealing with it in a quite humorous scene in the film. An awkward encounter between Jamie and another shy teenager, Erika (Marion van Cuyck) provides a mirror image of his yearning for Dan. But, back in his tent in the night, his dreams wander between the possibility of intimacy with an attractive teenage girl and a 26-year-old overweight charming “bear” who is Dan. This realization on the part of Jamie is a sensitively handled but Jamie senses that Dan is the object of his affection.
Dan is good-looking and “chunky” despite being a bit overweight and that definitely is what sets off Jamie’s attraction in the first place. Dan’s manly attention to Jamie’s older female cousin Allie places Jamie in a space of longing for attention from Dan. It’s when the two of them are thrown together when are hiking on their own, that Jamie realizes that he needs to break out of his shell and somehow get to open up to the object of his affection. Big Boys tells a story of unrequited queer desire and that is the most realistic thing about the film.
One of the joys of Big Boys lies in the contrast between the film’s easy-going, unforced rhythm and Jamie’s mounting desire for Dan, whose large build and flashing eyes make him seem like the boy’s older double. The kid is so awkward around Dan, with Krasner’s highly expressive fidgeting betraying Jamie’s internal chaos. Dan as played by David Johnson looks and acts like a charming gay “bear” although clearly heterosexual but just sexually attractive enough to entice gay viewers.
In talking about his film, Corey Sherman points out that usually young gay teenagers are portrayed a thin, white, and conventionally attractive. Since he grew up as an overweight kid himself, Sherman felt that he wanted to reflect his own experience on the screen. “I almost never saw anything that showed bigger people respect and treated their stories as if they were just as important as the thinner characters, and that their characters were as worthy of romance. If the character was big and likeable, then they were just the sidekick or they were just a complete joke.”
Early on, Jamie struggles to take his tee-shirt off to swim in the lake. By the end of the film, he has changed and actually does into the lake with his brother topless. Nothing more is said of it. He has become comfortable in his own skin, and that is how Jamie fantasies himself in a scene where he imagines hooking up with Dan later in life when he is in his 20s. “When he manifests himself in the future,” Sherman explains, “he’s not a thin supermodel. He’s still a big guy. That’s part of who he is, and he doesn’t find that’s something that he needs to get rid of to be attractive.”
There is no cliched “coming out” scene on the part of Jamie. It’s a quiet realization on the part of Jamie that it’s alright to be attracted to another man. He doesn’t feel pressured to act out standard positions about masculinity or sexuality. “Just because I was big then – and I still am – I’d have felt this feeling of being validates, and being shown that my body is attractive too.”
16-year-old lead actor, Isaac Krasner, provides a breakthrough performance reminiscent of Jason Schwartzman in Rushmore. His 14-year-old character, Jamie, also exudes the studied charm and comic fastidiousness of Rushmore’s hero Max Fischer. David Johnson as Dan is charming in his own way for a straight guy and kind-hearted in the latitude, he gives to this overweight teenager who is trying to figure things out.
Big Boys plays at 11:00 AM on Saturday, July 22, at the Directors Guild of America, Theatre 1. Expected to attend: Director Corey Sherman, actors Isaac Krasner, David Johnson III, Dora Madison, Taj Cross, Emily Deschanel. The film will also be available online via Outfest Streaming, beginning July 24. For tickets, go to: www.outfest.org.