Club Kid review: A24's party-boy dad comedy is a joy

A hard-partying New York club promoter wakes up to find a 10-year-old boy on his couch, and the boy is his son. That's the setup of Club Kid, and it sounds like a sitcom. It isn't.

The verdict: Jordan Firstman's debut as a director is one of the most charming films of the year, funny and chaotic for an hour, then genuinely moving. Critics agree: it has 98% on Rotten Tomatoes from 114 reviews and an 80 Metascore.

Firstman, the comedian best known from I Love LA and Search Party, writes, directs and stars as Peter, a promoter still living the same night out he was living in 2016.

That year, a drug-hazy hook-up in a club leaves a London tourist pregnant, though Peter has no idea. Ten years later her friend (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) turns up with Arlo (Reggie Absolom), the son Peter never knew he had. Arlo's mum has died, and Peter is all the family he has left.

The film was the talk of Cannes in May, where it got a six-minute standing ovation and sparked a bidding war that A24 won with a reported $17 million deal. It opened in six US cinemas last weekend and made $390,583, a huge average of more than $65,000 a screen.

A night out you won't regret

The party scenes are the first reason to see it. Cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra (The Studio, Euphoria) shot on 35mm inside real New York nightlife, and the film opens with a camera spinning around an Uber packed with far more people than it can legally carry.

Phil de Semlyen of Time Out (4 stars) called it "a headrush of pure charm" and compared it to Mia Hansen-Løve's dance-music epic Eden. The nights start euphoric and slowly curdle into something heavier for Peter.

Cara Delevingne plays Sophie, Peter's business partner, who cuts him off when his partying becomes a problem. She's sharp in a small role, a coked-up warning of where Peter is heading; Time Out called her "a walking cautionary tale".

But the film's heart is the father and son. Absolom, a young Brit in his first film role, is a revelation as Arlo, a clued-up kid with better taste in music than the adults around him.

Firstman is just as good. He plays Peter as boyish and generous but avoidant, a man who knows fatherhood is his chance to grow up and is terrified he'll blow it. Watching them go from strangers to family is the film's great pleasure, and the comedy never gets in the way of it.

The Film Stage's Rory O'Connor called it "funny, bittersweet, and tremendously moving" and put it in the line of stunted-dad films from Kramer vs. Kramer to Big Daddy. It's also one of the best New York films in years, full of real streets, real clubs and a soundtrack with Arthur Russell and Elliott Smith.

The catch

It isn't flawless. TheWrap's Zachary Lee, otherwise a fan, felt Firstman "often gets in his own way", using the film to make himself look good rather than following the story where it wants to go.

The conflict is thin, too. Peter and Arlo rarely clash in ways a bit of can-do attitude can't fix, so when child services threaten to take Arlo away, the stakes don't land as hard as they should.

Time Out also found some of the emotional beats rushed, including Arlo's grief and anger and a romance for Peter with Diego Calva's therapist, which never quite comes into focus.

At just over two hours, a little tightening wouldn't have hurt either.

None of it sinks the film. Time Out called the payoff "a beauty", and singled out a late scene of Peter crumbling as he reads Arlo a bedtime story as the one that will break your heart.

If you loved Scrapper, Eden or the messier, funnier side of A24, this is your film, and it's a rare comedy that earns its tears. It's rated R and playing in US cinemas now, expanding nationwide by Thanksgiving: catch it with a crowd while the party's still going.