Mark Reviews Movies: BROS

Bros, Universal Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 30, 2022

Billy Eichner co-wrote and stars in Bros, a romantic-comedy about a gay sort-of couple who keep getting in their own way. The movie is kind of like that, too.

For those who like arch and caustically sarcastic humor, Eichner is funny, to be sure, and that persona is only slightly watered down here to meet the expectations and requirements of a romantic lead. Otherwise, though, Eichner's Bobby Leiber (a name that's not exactly hiding the connection the actor playing the character) cuts to the quick about how gay culture has been translated, commodified, and altered by the wider culture. There's money to be made, after all, in a romantic-comedy about a gay couple, especially if the relationship looks exactly like all the ones between heterosexual couples that have populated rom-coms since they started.

Eichner and co-screenwriter/director Nicholas Stoller want to dispel a lot of those notions and call out how commercialized such endeavors, presented as groundbreaking acts of creative inclusion, have become. That's about half of this movie, which sees Eichner's Bobby directly address such ideas on his podcast and to anyone who will—whether that person wants to or not—listen, debate how and why stories about the LGBTQ community should be told, and really get to the point in scenes revolving around his sex life.

One of the early scenes here has Bobby hooking up with a guy from a dating app. If one's expecting some form of idealistic romance to emerge here, that scene, with its to-the-point and awkwardly unsatisfying half-climax, certainly puts such notions of amorous sentimentality on hold. For Bobby, sex is just a routine requirement, and he has no ambitions to find love or become part of a romantic couple or even go on some kind of legitimate date. Such things are for the happy, sanitized movies that he hate-watches on cable TV and not for a man like him, who can see through such claptrap.

Obviously, though, there's another story in here, because this is, after all, a movie with at least some desire to be a romantic-comedy of some kind. The screenplay also makes that perfectly clear, as Bobby recalls a time that he was asked to write a screenplay for such a sappy, wide-audience-friendly comedic romance. He refused, of course, for all of the aforementioned reasons, and just as Bobby is aware of all of the dishonesty and commercialization and everything that comes with those things, this movie is fully self-aware of its own intentions.

Yes, it's the story of a man who has no interest in love or a happy movie-like ending, but it's also itself, as that scene with the movie producer makes apparent, a mainstream piece of entertainment with at least some romantic ambitions. It's strange to watch a movie that so accurately and pointedly derides everything that it more or less becomes by the end.

Until that formula kicks in, though, the movie does seem to be doing the different something it promises to do. That's thanks to Eichner's performance, which completely convinces us that this guy is so above cheesiness and sentimentality that he has no choice but to look down on it, and the screenplay's embrace of broad satire. There are scenes from the sappy made-for-TV movie, for example, but there's also the sight of Kristin Chenoweth, presenting at an LGBTQ award ceremony, wearing a spinning re-creation of the Stonewall riots on her head. That's an idea so misguidedly distasteful that it's both funny and believable that someone might try something like it.

Some more amusing scenes come from discussions/debates about what should be placed in the first national LGBTQ museum, how those exhibits should be presented, and why maybe making the centerpiece a wedding ceremony might be more for straight people to feel good than something that makes a real point. Broad and specific insights into how popular culture has defined gay culture for society fit in quite well here, too, since this is also a piece of pop culture with its own definitions to make, but we're kind of avoiding the inevitable at this point.

That's the emergence of a pretty straightforward romantic-comedy with the arrival of Aaron (Luke Macfarlane), who's basically Bobby's muscular, sports-knowing opposite in terms of interests and personality. Their eyes meet at a club, and throughout the rest of the story, it's a lot of back-and-forth about whether or not they'll get over their respective insecurities, decide to give love a shot, and realize that, despite or because of their differences, they're basically perfect for each other.

Those are the broad strokes of the story, obviously, and to be fair to Eichner and Stoller's script, there is at least some attempt to base those back-and-forth complications on these characters' past experiences and self-doubts. At times, the relationship and its evolution feel genuine, especially when the two men allow themselves to be vulnerable—a habit Bobby avoids for a couple of reasons—with each other.

Is that ultimately all there is for this story and these characters? Bros itself insists that it shouldn't be all there is, because there's so much more to characters like Bobby, Aaron, and everyone surrounding them. In the end, it's difficult to take the movie's turn toward the sweet and sincere seriously, if only because the movie itself spends so much time telling us that we shouldn't.

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