Bros: 'Gay Rom-Com' Brings the Funny and the Romance, and More
By Jim Slotek
Rating: B+
Billed as the “first gay rom-com” – at least from a major studio – the funny and clever Bros takes the unusually meta step of mocking its very existence in the opening scene.
Podcaster Bobby Leiber (Billy Eichner, who’s also co-writer), serving as a de facto narrator, tells his audience about a pitch meeting with a studio executive who asked if he would write a “nice rom-com” about gay people.
Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane are a seemingly mismatched couple in the gay rom-com Bros
As he relates it, the idea horrified him, and he’d told the studio suit, “some gay people are not nice.”
Besides being a commitment-phobe – which is par for the romantic comedy course, straight or gay – Bobby has either fear or anger towards being “heteronormative.” As the head of a committee putting together New York’s planned LGBTQ+ Museum, he loses it with talk of a gay marriage exhibit.
“This isn’t Schitt’s Creek!” he declares, in one of the first of countless pop culture references, most with a gay connection (there’s talk of an app to connect gay men who only want to talk about actresses, and Will & Grace’s Debra Messing even gets a chance to “lose it” when Bobby becomes about the millionth gay man to unburden himself to her without asking).
But people who’ve seen Schitt’s Creek may notice that a climactic last-act romantic scene is literally lifted from the show, a suggestion that rom-coms might exert some kind of gravitational force that makes you follow the rules whether you want to or not.
Which is not to say that Bros is simply another rom-com with a gay template. The fortysomething Bobby lives in a Grindr world, where conversations with hook-ups consist of texts that begin, “What’s up?” There are “poppers” and “thrupples” and carefully shot sex scenes, many of which are hilariously awkward. Nonetheless, this may not be a movie for your grandma.
After a chance meeting at an almost anachronistically fabulous dance club, small-towner Aaron (Luke Macfarlane) upsets Bobby’s worldview. He’s a friendly, hard-bodied sports-nut who likes Garth Brooks over Mariah Carey, works in a job he hates as an estate lawyer, and prefers to meet people face-to-face in clubs rather than over an app. He’s also sometimes uncomfortable with Bobby’s more obvious gayness. And for his part, Bobby worries he can never measure up to the physical type Aaron seems to prefer. (But never mind, it’s Bobby’s mind that turns Aaron on).
Their relationship is a microcosm of “How gay should I be?” sexual politics. And it is just one thematic ball director Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and producer Judd Apatow juggle as the movie dances around its love story. There’s also diversity and privilege within the gay community that must come together to build this museum (early in the movie, Bobby is at a gala accepting the Cis White Gay Man of the Year Award).
So, there’s empowerment as a theme. And parents. And monogamy, and same-sex history (the movie is partly about a museum, after all – wait, Lincoln was secretly gay?). And there are, yes, famously “out” gay actors, including Harvey Fierstein and Married… With Children’s Amanda Bearse.
What’s remarkable is how the “funny” remains primary amid all these socially conscious sidetracks. Eichner, at times, keeps the comedy on track simply with extended dialogue/monologue riffs, a la Billy Crystal or Robin Williams in another era. A series of jokes about Hallmark Channel movies (called the HallHeart Channel) is an hilarious vehicle for “gays seen through straight eyes” and also an inside joke at Macfarlane’s expense, the Canadian actor having been the lead in about a dozen Hallmark movies.
A rom-com it is. A typical rom-com it isn’t.
Bros. Directed by Nicholas Stoller. Starring Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane. Opens in theatres Friday, September 30.