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‘Bros’ Review: Boy Meets Boy Meets Multiplex
Billy Eichner plays a moody podcaster who has sworn off relationships, but just might find himself in one anyway, in this gay romantic comedy.
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By Amy Nicholson
The comedian Billy Eichner is not a person you’d approach for love advice. Fans of his long-running viral videos, “Billy on the Street,” in which Eichner accosts New Yorkers to scream about pop culture, would not leap to list listening, empathy, communication or patience among his skills. Even his gentler sitcom was titled, justly, “Difficult People.”
Yet, through a quirk of fate — combined with a century of inertia — “Bros,” a semisweet, sexually frank queer valentine, makes Eichner the grimacing, skeptical face of the first major studio romantic comedy to star two adult gay men: the actor Luke Macfarlane, who came out publicly in 2008 , and Eichner himself, who co-wrote the script with the director Nicholas Stoller (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” “Neighbors”). As a meta-joke within the movie, Eichner’s character recoils when asked to create a gay rom-com with mass appeal. “Am I going to be in the middle of some high-speed chase and all of a sudden fall in love with Ice Cube?”
But the film itself has said yes, accepting the responsibility to make a hit able to break the glass rainbow in a time when buying a ticket to “Wonder Woman” or “Black Panther” or, now, “Bros,” is equated with waving a placard on the steps of the Supreme Court. “Bros” is hyper-conscious that it’s a landmark built on a fault line. No matter how many ideas it crams into its quick-paced plot, it’s doomed to fall short of representing an entire group of people — and it knows it shouldn’t have to. As such, Eichner’s challenge makes for a conflicted Cupid.
Eichner’s onscreen avatar, Bobby Leiber, is a strident variation on his persona: a podcast host who dominates conversations as though he’s the only one with a mic. Bobby blames being single on a litany of universal laments that dovetail with queer-specific gripes, say, guys on Grindr who type, “Must see pic of ass,” forcing him to fetch a ring light and razor.
At a promo party for a new app called Zellweger (“For gays who want to talk about actresses and go to bed,” his friend, played by Guy Branum, describes), Bobby meets Aaron (Macfarlane) and dismisses the hunky lawyer as yet another gay paradox: a man who’s both strappingly solid and emotionally vaporous. (Cleverly, the cinematographer Brandon Trost and the editor Daniel Gabbe assemble their first scenes together so that Macfarlane appears to vanish mid-conversation — literalized ghosting.) Neither man claims to believe in affairs that last longer than happily-ever-next-Thursday. Instead, Bobby and Aaron are competitively blasé, fumbling through a relationship that starts with a first-date foursome and hits its romantic climax with a text that reads, “What’s up.”
The dilemma of the film isn’t will-they-or-won’t-they ? Macfarlane, a seasoned lead of a dozen-plus straight Hallmark holiday romances including “Sense, Sensibility and Snowmen” and “A Shoe Addict’s Christmas,” is skilled at a Labradoresque eyebrow crinkle that could make anyone swoon. The suspense comes in watching Eichner struggle to reconcile his galaxy-brained cynicism with mainstream rom-com touchstones: Nat King Cole on the soundtrack, a sidewalk sprint inspired by “When Harry Met Sally …” and a happy ending even he just might believe in, a little.
“Bros” is more convincing when it digs into Bobby’s bitterness. His problem isn’t that the world refuses to support queer love. It’s that at 40, he can’t bring himself to tear down the walls he built when it didn’t. Bobby is a battle-scarred veteran of 20th-century homophobia suffering 21st-century whiplash. Acceptance has moved fast — almost too fast for Bobby, who sneers that the Hallheart Channel — a Hallmark lampoon — is pandering to sexual liberation with films like “A Holly Poly Christmas.” At the same time, Bobby’s friends are celebrating major commitments: throuples, surrogate-delivered triplets, even a gender-reveal orgy, and his diverse collaborators on the board of an L.G.B.T.Q. history museum consider white cisgender men to be mothballed relics.
No one at the museum can agree on what exhibits to place inside, a subplot that allows queer people in the film to openly debate which stories it wants to tell about itself. Must it still prioritize struggle over joy? Is there room for everyone’s point of view? And how can today’s storytellers honor people from the past whose passions may have been suppressed or erased? As a partial answer to these questions, the board creates a Hall of Bisexuals where Amy Schumer and Kenan Thompson play goofy, grinning holograms of Eleanor Roosevelt and James Baldwin. Let scholars argue about the display’s accuracy. It accomplishes what “Bros,” like every other rom-com, aims to do: charm audiences with a spirited, corny facsimile of life.
Bros Rated R for sex, swearing and a quick snort of poppers. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters.
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