{"id":55977,"date":"2026-11-12T15:36:25","date_gmt":"2026-11-12T20:36:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=55977"},"modified":"2026-11-12T15:36:25","modified_gmt":"2026-11-12T20:36:25","slug":"club-kid-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/12\/club-kid-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Club Kid [2026]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A club party promoter\u2019s life is upended when he discovers he has a ten-year-old in the charming, hilarious, character-driven CLUB KID. Writer-director-star Jordan Firstman\u2019s film is anchored by an astounding youth performance by Reggie Absolom that I have to mention before the \u201cread more\u201d break.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

First, Club Kid, written, directed, and starring internet comedian Jordan Firstman, features one of the year’s best youth performances. As Arlo, the sudden \u201cyou have a kid!\u201d ten-year-old pushed into party boy Peter Green\u2019s life, Reggie Absolom is grounded and knowing, exuding kindness and maturity in his eyes, with fantastic chemistry with his on-screen father, played by Firstman. But in no way is Absolom precocious or annoying, the \u201cwise beyond his years\u201d stereotype. Just a damned great performance. But one that is emblematic of the film on the whole. A slightly fabelistic story of growing up, but naturally told with strong charisma across the board, fantastically written and performed characters, and just a total likability to it all. A likable easiness glides through Club Kid.<\/span><\/p>\n

Club Kid is, distilled down, an Adult Child Forced to Grow Up story, as Firstman’s Peter Green is a barely functioning party organizer.\u00a0A career-best\u00a0Cara Delevingne<\/a>\u2019s Sophie does most of the work; he\u2019s the likable face, and she\u2019s the backroom busy bee, whose life is upended when The Good Place\u2019s Kirby Howell-Baptiste\u2019s Edison drops off Arlo, ten and raised in Britain by his flighty, party-girl mother.<\/span> This, just as the professional relationship with Sophie is breaking down and forcing a shift in outlook, is made bigger now with a huge responsibility.\u00a0 Familiar, yes, but on the worn hanger is a hell of an outfit. A sublimely beautiful relationship dramedy, with strong characters, humor, and heart, never saccharine or forced. True, comparisons to the 1999 Adam Sandler comedy Big Daddy seem apt on the surface, but there\u2019s a soulful depth to the world and people of Jordan Firstman\u2019s script, film, and New York queer club scene.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sure, so much of it might come easier than a real situation. But it’s fine. It doesn\u2019t need to be truly real; it\u2019s a film, not a documentary. Plenty of stories can capture the hardships of suddenly dealing with a 10-year-old, especially when you’re not in the best place in life to do so. The whole may be a simplified telling, but it\u2019s so incredibly engaging, one doesn\u2019t care or think of it when watching; only hearing the online cynics afterward who denounce any perceived break to unnessisably realism, who want a hard documentary of LGBTQ+, free sex, high drugs, hard party lives. It\u2019s not that kind of movie, kid. However, Club Kid is not a flight of fancy either. Fristman\u2019s script, combined with the groundedness of Adam Newport-Berra\u2019s 35mm New York (with some slightly shaky handheld), finds a truth nonetheless. It\u2019s real enough, with heart, humor, and humanity. Importantly, it feels true to itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Heck, it\u2019s uplifting in the slice of New York life Firstman drops us in. Peter might have been drifting through a drug enduced haze, but its\u2019 wonefful to find not only does he like being a dad, he\u2019s suprsignly good at. Perhaps, trading one addiction for another; whether it be drugs or dadhood.\u00a0 The connection between Peter and Arlo, or Firstman and Absalom, feels genuine and real. Together, they find connections and support they haven\u2019t felt in their lives before. It\u2019s heartwarming and true. Thus, I felt for them. I felt for them so hard; at our tougher emotional moments, I had tears, friends. \u00a0 Club Kid is a film of empathy and kindness. Many might not expect that in a whirlwind world of drugs and all-night parties. But it’s there. It doesn’t uplift that lifestyle, but it doesn\u2019t damn it as other films might. Even as Peter\u2019s focus shifts to a perhaps more boring \u201cadult\u201d life, it\u2019s just moving on, not a rebuke of the past.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It helps, in part, how utterly charming it all is.\u00a0 I legitimately liked Peter; he\u2019s established quickly as a decent guy; even in drug hazes, he looks to help his friends and his circle. He is loaning, rent-free, his extra room to his errant, sweetly stupid twink friend Nicky, played with a scene-stealing energy by Eldar Isgandarov.<\/span> Every time Isgandarov shows up, he brightens the film (I\u2019ve been told he does the same in The Debut; for another newcomer, what a start!). The connection between Peter, Arlo, Nicky, and<\/span> neighbor Evelyn, played by Clue\u2019s Colleen Camp, is delightful. But most so with Arlo. Peter doesn\u2019t quite know what he\u2019s doing, but he has help with said neighbor: his crew of partiers, including Saturn Risin9 (not a typo; 9 is part of her name) as Saffron. Oscar, a social worker played by Diego Calva, is a huge assist and another kind voice in the uncertainty, and a focus of Peter’s flirtation. I thought Calva would break out from the severely underseen Babylon,<\/a> although I recognized he might be lost among the A-listers he competed with. Here, primarily with Firstman and Absalom, he shines as another naturally charismatic character in a film filled with them.\u00a0 It\u2019s a film about found families and the love within them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Club Kid is Jordan Firstman\u2019s first film, after an unseen-by-me career as an influencer and YouTube personality (again showing this year a YouTube-to-Fantastic Filmmaker pipeline after Obsession<\/a> and Backrooms,<\/a> to name two), but you won\u2019t know it. The lived-in world is presented so naturally, with just-right shot choices that keep the tight, moving script moving. There\u2019s little unnecessary flourish; it opts for straightforward presentation, letting the script and characters do the work. I appreciate the confidence to let the story do the talking as they move through Newport-Berras’s exquisitely beautiful love letter to New York and its club scenes, just as lived-in and important but wholly different than the other New York love letter of Only Living Pickpocket in New York.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Jordan Firstman\u2019s Club Kid is a surprising revelation. I came into the film with little knowledge of it, a complete blank slate, and was gobsmacked by the results. A truly astounding youth performance by Absalom in a sea of great performances, a strength of characters in Firstman\u2019s script, and a wholly engaging, hilarious, sincere, and charming telling of a familiar story. Fully recommend.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A club party promoter\u2019s life is upended when he discovers he has a ten-year-old in the charming, hilarious, character-driven CLUB KID. Writer-director-star Jordan Firstman\u2019s film is anchored by an astounding youth performance by Reggie Absolom that I have to mention before the \u201cread more\u201d break.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[219,302],"class_list":["post-55977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-comedy","tag-drama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55977"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55982,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55977\/revisions\/55982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}