Bros, review: Hollywood’s first gay rom-com should feel fresh – but this stinks
We deserve a gay romcom better than Bros – less preachy, more sincerely warm-hearted, and preferably one not starring Billy Eichner, who starts blowing it the instant he appears. He co-wrote, too, with his director, Nicholas Stoller, and in a presumed nod to Stephen Sondheim’s Company, plays Bobby, a successful podcast host in New York who’s perpetually single, and mostly likes it that way.
Why wouldn’t you, if the sound of your own voice was this fulfilling? Eichner's alter ego grabs the mic whenever there’s one to hand, hogging the stage at gala functions where Bobby’s an Extremely Important Gay, telling us what a fab singer he is to cue up the vain finale, and explaining the whole predicament of being a cis, white gay man with low self-esteem in the modern world, while also insisting he’s one of the few out there who is truly, exceptionally clever.
The film rarely resists a chance to impugn other swathes of gay culture as essentially moronic, rolling its eyes from a pedestal of urbane sophistication which Eichner sets about pushing everyone else off.
There barely looks to be room up there for Aaron (Luke Macfarlane), an appealingly chilled, non-neurotic, fitness-obsessed hunk Bobby meets at a launch party and quickly starts talking to death. Bobby’s dating rituals amount to taking the other person hostage, barely giving them slack. Aaron thinks about nipping it in the bud quite early – run, Aaron, run! – but surprises himself, and baffles us, by testing out a longer attachment.
Macfarlane is OK, but there’re only so many ways you can act finding Eichner’s routines lovable before resorting to implausible face-pulling. It’s a lethal problem in a romcom when you neither fully buy these opposites attracting nor want them to wind up together. Despite the sex scenes, which are frank, funny and push the boat out, there I ended up, against all hope, rooting against these two.
With a gifted comic actor in Eichner’s part, willing to lampoon Bobby or give him a sweeter side rather than pushing him at us so self-righteously, we might have got a film that worked. They’ve written a heap of jokes – I chortled at the pitch for Hallmark’s bisexual heart-warmer “Christmas with Either” – even if most of the good lines go Eichner’s way.
The surrounding ensemble, including an LGBTQ+ conference room with someone of every persuasion, feel like they’ve been workshopped to within an inch of their lives to come up with the goods, but the snappier rejoinders from this posse do land.
It’s the “rom” that’s the killing shortfall. But I must admit, Bros put me in such a sour mood that its “com” got sabotaged into the bargain. It’s distinctly smug about pitching itself as a landmark, while being really more of a setback, and a pretty low bar for the next one to surmount.
116 mins; 15 cert. In cinemas now
