Bros

Prog­nos­ti­ca­tors have been telling of the rom-com’s immi­nent demise for some 30 years now, mur­mur­ing sage­ly that the genre just isn’t what it used to be, and stu­dios don’t seem to have any inter­est in fund­ing the sort of light-heart­ed romps between beau­ti­ful peo­ple that once lit up the box office. There’s been plen­ty of squab­bling about whether the genre is dead or alive, and what influ­ence chang­ing audi­ence appetites and the advent of stream­ing might have had on its for­tunes – mean­while Hol­ly­wood finds a new way every cou­ple of years to appar­ent­ly rein­vent the wheel.

Much was made dur­ing the US press tour for Nicholas Stoller’s Bros about the fact it was ​“the first gay roman­tic com­e­dy from a major stu­dio fea­tur­ing an entire­ly LGBTQ prin­ci­pal cast”, with lead Bil­ly Eich­n­er ​“the first open­ly gay man to write and star in a major stu­dio film.” Tout­ed as a land­mark for rep­re­sen­ta­tion on screen, it wasn’t actu­al­ly all that clear what Bros had to offer in terms of plot or char­ac­ters, as though its exis­tence alone was enough to make peo­ple flock to the cinema.

A thor­ough­ly mod­ern premise sees Eich­n­er play a char­ac­ter who seems at least a lit­tle based on him­self – Bob­by Leiber is a pod­cast­er and new­ly-hired cura­tor for the LGBTQ+ His­to­ry Muse­um, who claims to be hap­py with his sin­gle­dom and rolls his eyes at his friends who are cou­pled up or enjoy­ing play­ing the field. Bob­by meets ​“hot but bor­ing” Aaron (Luke Mac­far­lane) at a night­club, and while they flirt, he assumes Aaron isn’t inter­est­ed in him, and from there Bros falls into a famil­iar will-they-won’t‑they rhythm as Bob­by nav­i­gates dif­fi­cul­ties in his new job along­side the dif­fer­ences between him and Aaron which appar­ent­ly make them ill-suit­ed for one another.

For all Bros’ claims about being a ground­break­ing film, its plot leaves a lot to be desired in that depart­ment, rely­ing on the most basic rom-com tropes and tired stereo­typ­ing around queer iden­ti­ty to cob­ble togeth­er a fair­ly flat sto­ry­line. The char­ac­ters aren’t much bet­ter, and while Mac­far­lane does his best as a gay man attempt­ing to rec­on­cile his tra­di­tion­al mas­culin­i­ty with his sex­u­al­i­ty, it feels like Aaron should have been the lead over the judge­men­tal and snide Bob­by, whose per­sis­tent unpleas­ant­ness makes him a dif­fi­cult pro­tag­o­nist to invest in, let alone root for.

For all its sneer­ing at Schitt’s Creek – a show co-cre­at­ed by a queer man – Bros even steals a bit from it, when Bob­by ser­e­nades Aaron with a (very corny) orig­i­nal song. But while the aching­ly sin­cere and proud­ly twee Schitt’s Creek earned its moments of emo­tion­al poignan­cy, Bros attempts to shoe­horn sin­cer­i­ty into a script that can’t help stick­ing the knife into oth­er queer peo­ple at every turn.

Claims of inclu­siv­i­ty ring hol­low when a film resorts to tired stereo­typ­ing, and every sup­port­ing char­ac­ter in Bros seems like a par­o­dy cre­at­ed by an AI bot that’s been fed on noth­ing but Twit­ter dis­course and Tik­Tok par­o­dy videos. It’s a film lack­ing orig­i­nal­i­ty, but also heart – it’s hard to root for a cou­ple when you real­ly don’t care if they end up togeth­er or not. There are a cou­ple of fun­ny lines in the script, but run­ning at just under two hours, Bros drags on, lack­ing the effer­ves­cence that has cement­ed many a rom-com’s in pop cul­ture history.

When Bros’ box sub­se­quent box office returns were dis­ap­point­ing, the team behind the film lam­bast­ed audi­ences on social media, claim­ing straight ambiva­lence was tank­ing the film. It would be eas­i­er to see this as a pos­si­ble expla­na­tion if Bros was a bet­ter film – instead its holi­er-than-thou script and the over­all lack of romance in a roman­tic com­e­dy are more like­ly rea­sons Bros didn’t set the US box office on fire. Queer love sto­ries are every bit as indi­vid­ual as het­ero­sex­u­al ones, and we deserve to see them on screen, but can cer­tain­ly aim a lit­tle high­er than this smug, unsat­is­fy­ing mis­match of ideas.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive prints, essays, film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.