WATCH: Camping with a crush gets complicated in this coming-of-age charmer

Many of us with older siblings or other close family remembers can remember the often overwhelming feeling of being around their friends. They were cooler, more confident, more mature. They were everything we wanted to be—and maybe more.

The charming new coming-of-age movie Big Boys taps into that feeling with the perfect balance of heart and humor, following teen Jamie (Isaac Krasner in a breakthrough performance) on one fateful family camping trip.

All summer long, Jamie and his older brother Will (Pen15‘s Taj Cross) have been looking forward to camping with their cool cousin Allie (Friday Night Lights‘ Dora Madison). But things take a turn when Jamie gets the news that Allie’s bringing her new boyfriend, Dan (David Johnson III), along too.

Certain Dan’s presence will ruin his perfect weekend getaway, Jamie puts up his defenses. But it’s not long until the interloper starts to win him over, and suddenly the awkward teen finds himself mimicking Dan’s style and basically taking every chance he gets to spend time with him.

That intoxication of getting closer to a new crush, that sense of liberation you get on your first trips without your parents around, that slow but sure acceptance of one’s own personhood and queerness—writer-director Corey Sherman channels it all into his winning first feature, which feels destined to become a new coming-of-age classic.

What’s more, the film’s focus on its eponymous “big boys”—Jamie and Dan—sets it apart from so many other Hollywood narratives, queer or otherwise. Speaking with HuffPost, Sherman underlines exactly why that’s so vital:

“As a big guy myself, it was important to me that the actors who played these characters would be that body type,” Sherman shares. “There are a lot of people who are attracted to bigger people, but in movies and TV shows, the love interest is always someone who is thin and muscly. If a bigger character is presented as worthy of romance, it’s in spite of their size, or it’s because they have a good sense of humor. But Jamie is attracted to Dan in part because of his size. I wanted my movie to take that seriously.”

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Most recently, Big Boys made its West Coast premiere at Outfest in Los Angeles, where Krasner won the Grand Jury Prize for Outstanding Performance, and the film itself was selected as the audience award-winner for Best Narrative Feature.

Next, it heads to both the OUTSOUTH Queer Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina and the Out On Screen Queer Film Festival in Vancouver, Canada on August 12, and then to the Filmout LGBTQ Film Festival in San Diego, California on September 10.

Check out an early preview clip below, and stay tuned to the official Big Boys film site for all the latest on future screenings and more.

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