this is the best queer rom-com i’ve seen in years.

‘A Good Indian Boy’ is a comforting and hilarious Pride Month watch.

Queering the Burbs is a distillation of pop culture, politics and queerness published twice weekly by Joe Erbentraut. This is what’s good, this newsletter’s monthly column for paid Queering the Burbs subscribers exploring the movies and TV shows I’ve been enjoying (or not) over the past month.

Anyone can read a preview of the column below, but you’ll need to subscribe or upgrade to access the whole thing. And don’t forget to check out Joe’s just-published new zine!

Besides the painfully obvious “fuck ICE,” I’m not sure what can be said about what’s happening in the streets of Los Angeles and other cities right now that’s not being said so much more eloquently elsewhere already.

I’ve watched videos of residents and journalists being shot point blank with rubber bullets just for doing their jobs and trying to get home to sleep in their own beds. I saw one video of a police officer with their knee on the neck of a protester. I’ve seen videos of small children crying as their mothers are ripped out of their arms. I’ve seen this administration dismiss the entire population of Los Angeles as “a city of criminals.” I’ve seen this president opine openly about arresting a sitting governor for following the laws when it comes to the separation of state and federal rights.

None of this is OK, and yet the demands of daily life continue. The bills need to be paid and the dishes still have to be washed. These times call for protest and action—look for a “No Kings” protest near you this Saturday right here and resources here for how to support protesters in LA from afar as well as Chicago protesters closer to home—but they also call for taking care of ourselves and each other. And sometimes what you need is just a little bit of rest and something silly to watch on TV.

This is somewhere where the romantic comedy genre really shines, in my opinion. The films of this genre are generally pretty formulaic and simple to follow, making them a comforting watch that almost always delivers on its central premise—despite the presented obstacles, eventually a couple of folks will end up together. And isn’t that nice enough sometimes?

I recently watched A Nice Indian Boy, a new film released earlier this year that showcases a budding relationship between an Indian-American doctor (Karan Soni) and a white man he meets at a Hindu temple (Jonathan Groff) which grows a bit complicated when Groff’s character meets the family of Soni’s character. And for the film’s 96-minute runtime, I cried and laughed and I didn’t read any news alerts.

Read on for more of what I thought made A Nice Indian Boy so special, and for more TV and movie picks as part of this month’s edition of what’s good.

Movies

A Nice Indian Boy (VOD)

How gay is it? 10

Worth your time? 10

Did I already tell you that this movie is just a pure fucking delight? Directed by Roshan Sethi as an adaptation of a play written by Madhuri Shekar, the movie centers on Soni’s character of Naveen (you might recognize him from Deadpool, Abbott Elementary, Always Be My Maybe, or Office Christmas Party). Naveen has a vocally pro-gay mom (played by the brilliant comedian Zarna Garg) but still feels his family is uncomfortable with his queerness, and has never brought a boyfriend home to meet them. Then he meets a photographer named Jay (played by Groff of Looking, Glee, and Mindhunter fame) and everything sort of blows up.