Jock-meets-nerd gay romcom is a laugh-out-loud classic
BROS
Billy Eichner, Luke Macfarlane, Bowen Yang ★★★★☆
The list of mainstream Hollywood studio films centred on gay characters remains a short one that’s dominated by stories of coming out.
That’s not surprising — this milestone, after all, is a process heavy on dramatic tension, and a crossover point at which straight audiences begin to understand life on the other side — but it can be exhausting territory to revisit again and again, not least for viewers who have left that trauma some way behind. So, it’s refreshing, even casually groundbreaking, that Nicholas Stoller and Billy Eichner’s bright, lovable Bros treats gay identification as a fait accompli, and moves straight on to other everyday conflicts and contrasts within our community. This is, so to speak, an out-and-out romcom, written in the light, crowd-pleasing spirit of the genre’s 90s heyday, and hinging on an age-old, oppositesattract dynamic that acquires new relevance when applied to different masculine archetypes.
All that and it’s genuinely, effortlessly funny too, thanks to Eichner’s trademark quickfire, gently off-colour wit. His character, Bobby, is a variation on himself: a cynical middleaged podcaster who’s both conscientious and slightly gatekeeper-y about gay history and culture and is somewhat nonplussed when he’s commissioned to write (meta!) a screenplay for a mainstream, modern romcom. As timing would have it, he then happens to fall for Aaron (the adorable Luke Macfarlane), a hot, super-masc lawyer with a far breezier approach to his sexuality. The film mines nifty comedy from this jock-versus-nerd dynamic without ever being partisan about it: both men have something to learn and gain from each other.
If Bros leans a little too far into heteronormative convention in its final act — though its writer and stars are queer, the absence of that perspective in the director’s chair is occasionally felt — there’s a sweet, bracing maturity to its examination of how men love each other, and not just the simple fact of their doing so. 28 October