At the start of the summer before he heads off to college, lovestruck Egghead (Louis Tomeo) decides to tell his best friend Twinkie (Sabrina Jie-A-Fa) how he really feels about her. The only problem is the relationship is definitively platonic from her point of view, and she's not told Egghead that she's gay and in love with a DJ she met online. When animator Twinkie sees an opportunity to visit her wannabe lover in Texas under the ruse of visiting an animation studio, she steals her dad's car and ropes the unwitting Egghead into making the long journey with her.
Based on her 2019 short film of the same name and re-uniting all of the same key cast members, Sarah Kambe Holland's debut feature delivers a fun spin on some tried and tested teen movie staples. Sharing a basic plot outline with Rob Reiner's under-appreciated 1985 John Cusack-starring road trip comedy, The Sure Thing (an at odds pair head out on the road with one of them given the promise of romance and/or sex at the final destination; they encounter vehicular trouble and comedy ensues), Egghead and Twinkie find their friendship put to the test when things inevitably start to go awry for them on their journey, although at least here there's little chance of romance suddenly blossoming between them. Spoiler alert, there's no last minute changes of sexual preference from Twinkie.
Where the film does veer off course from the expected norm is in the consideration of Twinkie's status as a young Asian-American woman with no links to her heritage. Adopted by her ultra-conservative white parents with an unspoken pre-requisite to conform in every way she can, Vivian aka Twinkie (her nickname itself a co-opted racial insult implying she's "yellow on the outside, white on the inside") needs to explore her Asian identity as well as her sexuality, and neither her parents or her supportive best friend Egghead can offer help with either. She's not just running towards her potential future as an out and proud lesbian, but also away from the confines her home life have put on her. Enter sweet Japanese waitress Jess (Asahi Hirano) who finds herself thrown into the middle of Twinkie's quest, and is more than willing to help guide her to a place where she's more comfortable with herself.
Mixing animation with live action, Egghead and Twinkie offers some cute Scott Pilgrim-esque cutaways to brighten up what is already a very cheerful, teen-friendly rainbow-coloured palette. Its unavoidable sweetness means the story is barely stretched in dramatic terms, with Twinkie's potential paramour B.D. (social media star Ayden Lee) offering the only glimmer of a more complex view of modern relationships, rendering the film relatively chaste and more focussed on finding something deep and meaningful... love. Told partly through flashbacks (including Egghead's disastrous movie theatre declaration of his true feelings for Twinkie), it may be blindingly obvious as the story progresses where we're going to end up, but the cast are all extremely likeable, the dynamics between them (in particular Jie-A-Fa and Hirano) work very well, and the film's more farcical elements are delivered with good comedic effect.
A modern, queer addition to the teen comedy genre, Egghead and Twinkie might not win awards for originality, but it's colourful, vibrant and super sweet, with solid chemistry between the leads.
Verdict
3.5/5
Egghead and Twinkie screened as part of this year's BFI Flare Film Festival. More information about the festival and its line-up can be found here.
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