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Fat Girls' charm, immediacy and downright believability are actually enhanced by its low tech, low budget look. Ash Christian captures what is best in the campy, low-class realism styles of such famous directors as John Waters, Ed Wood, and even David Lynch while still remaining entirely original in his approach.

Additionally, he manages to pull out one-of-a-kind, off-the-wall, absurdist performances by his talented cast of truly unusual character actors. If you think you've seen every gay take on growing up and coming out in a redneck town, you need to see this film. There are moments in Fat Girls where one can't quite believe what's actually coming off the screen.

With so many newcomers, locals and non-professionals in the cast of this film, the acting takes on a very artsy, hip, “non-acting” style. The result is at once creepy, funny and even realistic. In the scenes where Rodney's parents reveal their uber-fundamentalist religious proclivities, there's a touch of Eraserhead in Fat Girls.

In its Texas-small town look, extremely conservative, small-minded local yokel characters, and downright weirdness, Fat Girls also shares an uncanny kinship with classic low budget, 1950's camp sci-fi flicks like The Blob and The Giant Gila Monster. All share a plotline in which outcast teens learn somehow to win over backward local townspeople.

In making this film, Christian has composed comedic and absurdist high school student scenarios that are just quirky enough to be entirely believable. For gay viewers, I guarantee this cinematic trip down teenage wasteland will dredge up all manner of puberty ritual memories--from the shamefully embarrassing to the shamelessly glorious. Gay men everywhere, as well as all who felt belittled or alienated as youths will identify with this film.

“I knew for my first feature I had to do something from my heart,” Christian recently told Filmmaker Magazine. “I always felt like an outsider in high school. I was the ultimate loner theater geek growing up in Paris, Texas--and I think everyone feels like an outsider at one point of another.”

Perhaps it's because he is still so young, but Christian's memories and visualizations of high school seem as fresh as yesterday. And he leaves no stone unturned in his search for remembrances of gay adolescence. From learning about sex to playing dress-up to the very first boy-boy date, it's all there and told in a refreshingly sweet, innocent, self-deprecating style.

Christian's depiction of Rodney's first time in a gay bar and first time seeing a drag queen perform are little queer cinematic masterpieces unto themselves. His directorial way with camera angles, soft focus, and slow pan in close-up shots have an uncanny visual kinship to the way such special (and often besotted) remembrances are recalled.

Fat Girls is a kind of gay Porky's meets American Pie. It is a heart-warming reminder of just how special each of our teenage “gay self-awareness” and “coming out” stories are.

Ash Christian has appeared in such television shows as Six Feet Under, Cold Case, The Division and Over There. He is perhaps most famous for his award-winning lead role in the “Got Milk” TV commercials. Only 20 years old, Modern Luxury Magazine has called him “the next indie-film heavyweight”. Fat Girls premiered last week at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Get more info about Fat Girls at the official website.

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