SABRINA JIE-A-FA AND LOUIS TOMEO IN EGGEHEAD & TWINKIE

SARAH KAMBE HOLLAND: EGGHEAD & TWINKIE (2023)

Road trip

TRAILER

Premise: After coming out to her parents, mixed race Asian American teenage girl Vivian, aka Twinkie, goes on on a road trip to meet her online girl crush "BD" with the help of her nerdy straight white male best friend, Matthew, aka Egghead, who's bound for Stanford in the fall. This becomes a voyage of self discovery and is a candy-colored delight for young audiences about sexuality, race, and coming to terms with who you are.

As Twinkie tells it, she and Egghead have been friends since childhood. It turns out he has been in love with her for ages, though to save face after she now rejects him, he tells her it's only been recently. Why didn't he know she's lesbian? How well does he really know her? Presumably because, though she's been aware of it since fifth grade, she has been hiding her sexuality from everybody else up to now, including from him, her best male friend.

But best male friend he is. "I saw him Naruto running in the front yard ohe morning and the rest is history," is how Twinkie describes their friendship. He lives across the street. Naruto running is a meme from anime. It means running bent forward at a 30º angle with arms extended straight behind you. Some people actually showed up to "practice" Naruto running in Central Park recently. Anime is a passion Egghead and Twinkie share. Actually, Twinkie wants to become an anime artist. They also have shared tastes for slushies, pretzels, and bike-riding. They attend school together. And they work for the same company, holding promotional signs by the side of the road, Egghead being the one brave enough to wear his upper body encased in a giant sun costume.

This movie declares its youthfulness and cuteness and its Instagram origins aggressively with its chirpy cheer, bright colors, pop tunes, and frequent use of animated words like "SLURP" or "CRUNCH" or other on-screen text messages. Like the hit British teen gay TV series "Heartstopper," it likes to show that love is in the air by having little animated hearts floating around the in-love people. The film also pops rapidly back and forth in time in the first half, using energetic editing to fill us in on its several layers of backstory. None of this does too much harm, though the essential, warmest moments remain the simple ones filled with unadulterated feeling that could have occurred in a more conventional movie.

The leads, Louis Tomeo of Nickelodeon's "Every Which Way" as Egghead, and Sabrina Jie-A-Fa of "Will Trent," are able and appealing and have good chemistry. The moments when their bickering and kidding turn to fun really sing. As often happens, the two actors are older than their teen parts - she's supposed to be 17 and he 18, but he's 21 and she's a ripe old 27 - yet the more emotional scenes still play authentically, break free of the busy teen-friendly graphics and can appeal to any age.

This is a film about identity, focused mostly on that issue as faced by Twinkie. Both she, whose parents call her Vivian and Egghead, whose name is Matthew, have embraced insults with their adopted nicknames. He is accepting that people think he's a nerd. She has taken on the derogatory term for an assimilated Asian who's "yellow on the outside, white on the inside." Twinkie is adopted, and her white parents are separated, though trying to get back together (and perhaps to lose weight). She is Chinese but not so sure even of that: a fellow Asian spots that she "looks mixed" and all she's clear about is that she came from Miami. Egghead may have identity issues too. After all, he's a teenager. It may have been destabilizing to hang out all your life as best buds with a girl you've actually always been in love with. Being about to go from ordinary highschooler to student at a prestigious university may make him feel challenged. The two of them need to go beyond the typecasting expressed in their nicknames and realize just how important their friendship has been, and this is what their adventure does.

Egghead & Twinkie moves at an assured and rapid pace. First the pair go to a movie and he tries to kiss her. Her strong negative reaction to this gesture is a reality check for Egghead. She says she is lesbian, but might not like him "that way" even if she wasn't. Afterward Twinkie tells her parents her repugnance to Matthew's attempt to kiss her is solid proof she's "a raging homosexual." Her dad (J. Scott Browning) insists she is much too young to know that. At her age, he says, he wanted to be a marine biologist. "And now look at me: I'm in real estate." The parents go into denial mode.

Twinkie talks the rejected Egghead, who routinely chauffeurs her everywhere, into stealing her dad's cheesy real estate business car and driving the two of them from Florida all the way to Dallas. This is to attend LezDance, a big lesbian event and there to meet "B.D.," her online gf (or who she thinks is that), but Twinkie doesn't tell Egghead this at first. She tells him a series of lies to conceal this true aim till they're well on their way, saying her goal is to investigate an art school. En route, they have an argument and she drives off 50 miles in the car on her own. It breaks down, her credit card bounces, and he loses his wallet. Flash-forwards assure us all this sorts out in the end, and she starts being more truthful, Egghead's enumeration of Twinkie's lies being benchmarks of her coming-of-age and self-acceptance.

While derailed away from Egghead and waiting for a local amateur mechanic to fix the car for her, Twinkie meets a friendly Japanese American girl, Jess (Asahi Hirano), who turns out to be bi, and they have a great time. When Twinkie is reunited with Egghead and they arrive in Dallas by night for LezDance where BD (Ayden Lee) is DJ-ing, the other thing doesn't work out, which is the movie's big, sad, emotional moment (not counting Egghead's rejection by Twinkie at the movie).

But the other things do work out, and most of all this sprightly charmer is a celebration of friendship and a look at finding out which relationships hold up and which ones don't. Egghead & Twinkie teaches not to believe somebody who says "I love you" unless you know how many people she says that to. This assured and promising debut from filmmaker Sarah Kambe Holland, who is mixed-white British and third gen Japanese heritage born in Japan who grew up in Texas (See director interview), is a movie for LGBTQ+ teens about racial identity, sexuality, coming out, and knowing who you can trust. It's lighthearted and fun, but also enlightening and smart.

Egghead & Twinkie, 87 mins., debuted Mar. 1, 2023, internet and Redwood City, CA (Cinequest: Best Comedy Feature), included also at BFI Flare London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival Mar. 16, 2023, Cleveland Mar. 29, Seattle May 19, Outfest L.A. Jul. 17, Orlando (Best Narrative Feature), Reeling LGBT+ Chicago (Best Narratiive Feature), Toronto (Next Wave), Seattle, Austin, Woods Hole, and more fests. Available on demand in the U.S. and Canada Apr. 29, 2025. Rotten Tomatoes: 96%.