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“Bros,” co-written by and starring Billy Eichner , has been touted as the first mainstream Hollywood studio-backed rom-com to feature gay men as the leads. Directed by Nicholas Stoller and produced by Judd Apatow , the film consciously evokes tropes from the hey-day of studio-backed romantic comedies, including nods to more than one Meg Ryan classic and a compelling lead performance from Eichner. However, its perpetual commentary on the mainstreaming of queerness remains at odds with its very desire to tell its story within the Hollywood system. 

Eichner plays Bobby Leiber, a born and bred New Yorker who hosts a queer history podcast called 11th Brick (because as a cis white gay man that’s probably the brick he’d have thrown at Stonewall) and is the director of the first national LGBTQ history museum, on the brink of finally opening its doors. At 40, Bobby has spent most of his life alone and has convinced himself he’s better off this way. “We’re horny and we’re selfish and we’re stupid. I don’t trust these people,” he tells a group of friends when explaining why he prefers hookups to anything long term. 

This being a self-aware rom-com, Bobby’s life and plans change when he meets Aaron ( Luke Macfarlane ) at a club. Before we know it the two have decided to be emotionally unavailable together. What follows is a by-the-books romantic comedy filled with dates and sex and fights and meeting the family, all with a queer twist. The soundtrack filled with jazzy Nat King Cole songs helps evoke a Nora Ephron-style New York Autumn.

Running B-side to Bobby and Aaron’s love story are the preparations to open the museum. Here we see Bobby’s (and presumably Eichner’s) passion for queer history and community. The museum board is made of a variety of queer people, including a butch lesbian, a belligerent bisexual, a Black trans woman, and a nonbinary person. Unfortunately, each character comes across as a cliché, which is likely by design as the whole film uses queer identity as a springboard for jokes. Many of the jokes do land, because if anything queer people know how to laugh at ourselves. However, what Eichner and co-writer Stoller seem to have forgotten is that a rom-com like “When Harry Met Sally” is so iconic not just because of Harry and Sally's authenticity, but that all of its characters feel like real people. 

While most of the characters are underdeveloped, Eichner’s razor-sharp wit and caustic humor shines through in the dialogue and situational comedy as he skewers many aspects of gay dating culture, from Grindr hookups to obsessive gym usage to group sex. The script is not peppered with queer history and countless name-drops of queer icons like Cher, Barbra Streisand , and Mariah Carey .  

Eichner also takes jabs at the modern commodification of queer culture within the entertainment industry, from the “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” reboot to the universal love of “Schitt’s Creek” to Hallmark’s inclusion of queer rom-coms (going so far as creating fake titles like "Christmas with Either" and "A Holly Poly Christmas") once they realized a profit could be made. Although Eichner rejects this very sanitization of queerness, the self-aware rom-com beats in “Bros” find it treading the same waters. 

Late in the film, Bobby tells the museum board, “We fight like crazy, and we always have, but you’re my people.” This is the guiding light of “Bros”: to show the gays as messy, to show the queer community as more than a monolith, to have them be as loud and proud and take up as much space being their authentic selves as possible.

And it really is great to see a mainstream Hollywood film of this magnitude with this kind of representation from throughout the LGBTQ community. However, it defeats its own message of bringing queer history and queer life out of the margins when it centers the love story between two cis, conventionally attractive white gay men. Eichner is the first to point out his privilege; early on his character wins an award at an LGBTQ gala for Best Cis White Gay Man of the Year. But being self-aware isn’t as impactful as de-centering the cis white gay man as the lead, especially when every other queer character in the film still remains on the margins of the story. 

“Bros” is clearly a labor of love for Eichner, and as a belligerent bisexual (petulant pansexual?) myself, I laughed a great deal at the comedy. As a commitment-phobe who found romance late in life, I was moved by the core relationship. And as a country girl, I felt like the running Garth Brooks joke was tailored specifically for me. But there's also something at odds with Eichner’s mission to bring queerness, gay sex, and gay dating in all its texture to mainstream Hollywood studio-backed cinema, while in the same breath sanitizing queerness to be palatable to straight culture. 

For a movie so focused on the importance of mainstreaming queer history, it seems to care very little for the queer films that came before it. Bobby and Aaron discuss how often straight male actors win praise for playing gay cowboys, but beyond digs at both “ Brokeback Mountain ” and “ The Power of the Dog ” (directed by and starring straight people), the only other queer film mentioned is Luca Guadagnino's “Call Me By Your Name” in a throwaway joke about how it's the one queer movie to which all straight people compare other queer films. By only highlighting those few movies—ignoring queer cinematic pioneers in the process—“Bros” is as culpable of keeping queer history (in this case cinematic history) in the shadows as has happened to the other facets that Bobby’s LBGTQ museum is supposedly shining a light on. The point of the museum is to show history through a queer prism, yet the film itself doesn’t seem to view cinema in the same way. Worse yet, "Bros" thinks of itself as the most important pioneer solely because it's doing so on a mainstream level.

This review was filed from the premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10. "Bros" opens on September 30th.  

Marya E. Gates

Marya E. Gates is a freelance film and culture writer based in Los Angeles and Chicago. She studied Comparative Literature at U.C. Berkeley, and also has an overpriced and underused MFA in Film Production. Other bylines include Moviefone, The Playlist, Crooked Marquee, Nerdist, and Vulture. 

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Film Credits

Bros (2022)

Rated R for strong sexual content, language throughout and some drug use.

115 minutes

Billy Eichner as Bobby Leiber

Luke Macfarlane as Aaron

Monica Raymund as Tina

Guy Branum as Henry

Guillermo Díaz

• Nicholas Stoller
• Billy Eichner

Cinematographer

• Brandon Trost
• Daniel Gabbe
• Marc Shaiman

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The Bros and cons of being a huge, gay Hollywood rom-com

Bros wants to be a gay love story that doesn’t play it straight.

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Billy Eichner seems like the fun kind of grumpy — like a person who will say the mean stuff you’d wish you could say out loud. Eichner rocketed to success and visibility based on his ability to charmingly harangue New Yorkers on sidewalks. Then on Difficult People , he sharpened that crankiness and pop culture savvy into an acidic, narcissistic lead also named Billy, in a show that’s loosely based on his and his friend Julie Klausner’s lives.

The underlying irony of Eichner’s humor is that the crankiness is blazing insecurity, the meanness is neurosis, and his self-absorption is a symptom of being his own biggest critic. He’s hilarious and caustic, but you probably wouldn’t assume he’s a romantic.

Eichner is now starring as Bobby in Bros , which he co-wrote with director Nicholas Stoller. In it, he flexes a similar smart irritability that we saw in Difficult People and Billy on the Street — this time, in a rom-com. (Eichner has maintained that the movie isn’t strictly autobiographical but that it does borrow from his own life.)

Romantic comedies are rare at this point, and romantic comedies about two gay men, starring two gay men (and an all-LGBTQ cast ) are even rarer. Bros has the unfortunate pressure of being revolutionary by simply existing. Never mind that “revolutionary” in this case is more about how slow mainstream Hollywood can be when it comes to depicting LBGTQ relationships rather than any genuinely groundbreaking concepts that Bros contains. That’s an incredible amount of pressure to place on a movie about two conventionally attractive (one looking like a Marvel superhero) cis, gay white men who fall in love.

It’s not a particularly easy position to be in.

Eichner has drawn fire for trying to talk about the importance of Bros while simultaneously, and perhaps inadvertently, putting other LGBTQ movies down . He also has described the act of seeing the movie as a form of active resistance against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s view on gay rights. I do not believe Bros ’ box office will necessarily determine the future of Obergefell v. Hodges.

But the movie is concerned with the specifics, meaning, and pressures of gay culture. As its title suggests, Eichner’s script roasts gay male culture and its obsessiveness with masculinity and muscles. The way traditional, heterosexual masculinity is lauded in gay male culture is a gay conundrum that should be made fun of more, and Eichner is more than skilled at doing so.

What caught me off-guard, though, is how thoughtful Eichner is when it comes to mapping out his own character’s vulnerability. In a way that his comedy often elides, Bros has Bobby connecting the dots between cynicism and a pursuit of happiness. It’s terrifyingly intimate territory. I thought I knew Billy Eichner to be someone cynical, who’d written off romance, but Bros reflects a curiosity about how love functions in the heads and hearts of gay men. It’s a question worth exploring.

Bros is a story of a neurotic boy standing in front of another boy, asking him to love him

Bros operates on a gimmick: It asks explicitly what a gay love story could look like, free from hetero norms, and then, by coincidence, its hero has a chance to answer that question.

The question comes to Bobby at work. He’s an award-winning podcaster who lands a dream gig of curating the country’s first LGBTQ+ museum in New York City. The museum gig is a vehicle for the movie to talk about queer history. Specifically, it’s a chance for Bobby to wrestle with the idea of how much same-sex marriage — the biggest pop culture touchstone when it comes to gay rights — factors into the identity of the museum and his own identity as a gay man.

Bobby is an intellectual and political crank, an antithesis to the movie’s title. “Bro” itself implies a simpleness of being. Bros are part of the same genus as himbos, a laid-back species of masculine men. Bobby’s never laid-back; he’s argument-prone and hyper-aware. He’s funny in a way that complaints about failing bodies are funny, and watching him navigate through the world of gay male desire — hookup apps, flirty texts, DMs slides, and circuit parties — is sometimes hilarious, often at his own expense.

Same-sex marriage ushered in a wave of tolerance and economic benefits for LGBTQ people, but Bobby’s a bit skeptical. To him, the advantages of gay marriage have also come at a price: the sanding down of the edges of gay life (even if he’s not partaking in those edges) into something more palatable for straight consumption. The years and years spent trying to convince straight people that LGBTQ people are just like them was maybe too effective, particularly when it comes to sex and romance.

To Bobby, straight people love Schitt’s Creek and its earnest gay romance because it’s egregiously, dopily unsexy — also the big reason he hates it so much. And oh my god, does Bobby really hate Schitt’s Creek .

Since he doesn’t want the museum to pretend that same-sex marriage is the final, happy ending for queer rights, Bobby challenges his colleagues and his friends to imagine what an actual gay love story for gay people looks like. It’s a clever nod to the problem of creating a gay rom-com that doesn’t look like the same old straight stuff.

Then, at a shirtless party, Bobby meets Aaron (Luke MacFarlane), a lawyer specializing in estate planning. That means that Aaron helps people draw up paperwork and decide where their money will go when they die. But Aaron doesn’t look like the kind of person who would have this job, gently guiding people to death. Aaron looks like a Barry’s Bootcamp instructor, someone you pay to be mean to you in a fitness way. He’s the kind of handsome that you can’t tell if you’re attracted to him or just want to have his pecs.

Bobby and Aaron’s meet-cute isn’t really a conversation since the music is too loud (one of my homosexual friends refers to the music played at shirtless gay dance parties as “bing bong stuff”). It’s also not really a conversation because Bobby is mostly just yelling complaints about the party at Aaron. It works though, and Bobby and Aaron spend the rest of the movie figuring out whether and how much the other one likes them.

There’s plenty of guy-on-guy sex happening in Bros , some of it hot and fun, some of it silly, and some of it both. Again, because of the relative lack of big Hollywood movies centering gay men and the sex they have, showing gay group sex might be seen as audacious or groundbreaking. But the most daring thing Bros does is trace the psychology of Bobby’s emotional intimacy.

Bobby is hesitant to open up to Aaron, in large part, due to not feeling handsome or muscular or successful enough to warrant the affection of someone who is as handsome, as muscular, or as successful as Aaron. Admittedly, I’m not up to date on the latest heterosexual trends and best practices, but I don’t believe feeling like someone is out of your league is exclusively a queer problem.

There’s plenty going on beneath the surface, though.

As Bobby tells Aaron, he spent his whole childhood and adolescence being told to be anyone but the person he was. It’s a common experience for many little gay boys. Those kids grow up and that message takes its toll. Many gay men then spend an inordinate amount of their adult lives unraveling that damage, cleaving away the artificial parts of themselves they’ve built to find acceptance and finally rediscovering, sometimes too late, the tender bits that they discarded.

A lot of the movie and a lot of Eichner’s comedy satirizes this trauma, stretching it to the point of neurotic derangement — Eichner once told James Corden and a slightly unamused Riley Keough about not feeling handsome enough to warrant a happy ending after a massage. Bobby’s insecurity, his deep belief that everything — Aaron, his job, his success — can be yanked away at a moment’s notice, comes from the same place as the stress of not being hot enough for a hand job, but it’s delivered without the defense humor provides.

When the movie gives us a glimpse into Aaron’s life, we see what these very different men have in common. They have the same experience of hiding themselves, but just broke in different ways. Aaron compensated by following a career path and workout regimen that was supposed to get him to a place where he’d be happy. Despite the abs, wealth, and validation, his happiness is also unfortunately tethered to a fear of losing it all.

Love, then, is a surreal thing for two men who have constantly been told it’s conditional. It’s somehow even more fragile when they come to the realization that they want it. Bobby and Aaron’s relationship is as much a negotiation of their own hangups and feelings of desire as it is wading through each other’s fears and insecurity to better understand each other. And of course, that’s exactly the kind of complicated gay love story that Bobby would love to see reflected in his museum exhibit.

The pressures of gay life — whether that’s adhering to and later breaking norms in search of happiness, navigating sexual and aesthetic expectations, trying to forge an authentic life, or even speaking for the community through a museum exhibit or a de facto revolutionary movie — can feel enormous. And it’s thrilling to see it explored in romantic comedies like Bros . Hopefully, though, there’ll be a time where there’s not so much pressure to be “revolutionary.”

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Bros review – Billy Eichner’s all-LGBTQ+ romantic comedy is a winner

The comedian’s glossy, Judd Apatow-produced queer comedy is incredibly funny and insightfully smart

B illy Eichner’s slick Judd Apatow-produced gay comedy, Bros, carries with it the specific sort of baggage that only a “first” is forced to carry. As the first theatrically released studio gay rom-com, the first studio film co-written by and starring an openly gay man and the first studio film with a majority LGBTQ+ cast, it’s a light movie made heavy with expectation – will it be gay enough or good enough or accessible enough or profitable enough – an unfair yet unavoidable heap of crosses to bear.

Eichner is of course acutely aware of this and so is his film, through-lined with fears over the difficulties of making gay art, how to feel important as a gay person and how to exist and excel in a culture dominated by straight people (should we beat them or join them?). His comedy, best known from Billy on the Street and the short-lived series Difficult People, has always been intense and anxiety-ridden, he has a nervy energy that’s uncomfortably infectious to watch ( “Name a woman!” ), and it tracks that his first film as a writer would be also filled with existential gay angst.

His character Bobby is a version of himself just a few degrees to the left – a successful podcaster who prides himself on being single and self-sufficient, existing on the intimacy of friendships and the brief pleasure of random hookups while balking at the ways that other gays choose to define themselves and their romantic lives. He rolls his eyes at marriage, throuples and shirtless circuit party gym bros – that is until he meets one of them, who upends his expectations. Aaron (Luke Macfarlane) is introduced to him as hot but boring and so Bobby is surprised when he finds something more substantive and slowly romantic. The two men, who have chosen a life devoid of commitment, have to navigate how the alternative might work.

There’s a tension throughout Bros between making a gay film and making The Gay Film We Need Right Now, the micro vs the macro, and it’s something that takes Eichner, and co-writer/director Nicholas Stoller, some time to iron out. In the opening stretch, a few too many lines of dialogue feel closer to Twitter takes, plainly stated “the thing about … is” witticisms, a strain to always be “saying something” rather than just speaking. But Eichner’s confidence in how he chooses to get his many points across soon grows, embedded within the plot with more dexterity. And when the balance between the rom, the com and the commentary works, Bros really flies.

One of Billy-Bobby’s complaints about the increased acceptance of gay culture – the assertion that love is love, that gay relationships are just the same as straight ones – is something that the character and the film around him are eager to disprove. Despite the gloss and the wide release that Bros is about to be given, Eichner isn’t that interested in pandering to straight audiences, to over-explain what poppers are or what Grindr is or worry if he’s putting them off. He trusts them enough to figure it out or if they don’t, he’s too busy elsewhere to care.

There’s rich detail in the small character moments, like both men sadly recalling the jobs they wanted to have as kids before they worried about how gay that would make them seem, and unlike so many other loosely autobiographical concoctions that have been more clouded by ego, he’s willing to make his character believably unlikeable at important moments. I’d argue he could have been a bit harder on himself, especially in the grand romantic apology-filled finale which falls a little too heavily on the shoulders of the other bro, but in a subgenre filled with writers creepily insisting their loveliness, it’s better and knottier than the norm.

Eichner also manages to make a surprisingly convincing segue from comedy bit-player to leading man, not just delivering on the many funny moments (toning down his trademark manic delivery is key) but doing a more-than-competent job at the messier stuff too (there’s a particularly effective monologue on the beach in Provincetown about being seen as “too gay”). Inevitably Macfarlane’s bro gets a little less texture and at times his existence and some of his dialogue borders on fan fiction (he tells Bobby how incredible he is on numerous occasions but the same is rarely said back to him) but the actor, a Hallmark Channel stalwart, makes for a charming vision of what a dream boyfriend could be. The supporting cast, made almost entirely of LGBTQ+ actors (bar two smart cameos from Debra Messing and Kristin Chenoweth and some other surprises at the end), are strong in small bursts, and the scenes of Eichner warring with other group representatives in the fight to open an LGBTQ+ museum are very amusing.

Pairing Eichner with Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s Stoller, who knows how to deliver a crowd-pleasing studio comedy, gives Bros that sleek efficiency that comes with the best Apatow productions, the familiar mixture of genuine laughter, cutting insight and sugar-free warmth (it also has the slightly baggy runtime that has become a less desirable ingredient). It’s big and clever in a way that so few films of this scale are these days – a pleasure to be shepherded through the easy motions of a romantic comedy by people who know what they’re doing for once, and manages to walk a difficult tightrope without falling, despite the heft of baggage. It might not be The Gay Film We Need Right Now (is anything worthy of that title?) but it’ll be one that many of us will want instead.

Bros is screening at the Toronto film festival and will be released in the US on 30 September and in the UK on 28 October

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‘Bros’ Review: Billy Eichner’s Rom-Com Is One of the Best in Years

Written by Eichner and Nicholas Stoller, 'Bros' is one of the sexiest and funniest films of 2022.

Editor's Note: This review was originally part of our TIFF coverage. In Bros , the history of rom-coms permeates this story of two men who struggle with commitment issues falling for each other. Bobby Lieber ( Billy Eichner ) talks with a guy on Grindr about how the app is kind of like You’ve Got Mail (while the guy on the other end demands ass pics). There are several references throughout to When Harry Met Sally… and there’s even a party to celebrate the launch of a new app called Zellweger, which is for guys who just want to meet up, talk about celebrities, then fall asleep. Bros— from director Nicholas Stoller ( The Five-Year Engagement , Forgetting Sarah Marshall ) and co-written by Stoller and Eichner—is steeped in the history of rom-coms, and for good reason, as Bros immediately becomes a part of that legacy. Not only is Bros the first romantic comedy to feature a primarily LGBTQ+ cast put out by a major studio, it also immediately joins the ranks of the great rom-coms, a hilarious, sexy, and undeniably charming rom-com from beginning to end.

Eichner stars as Bobby, a podcast host who is also working on getting the first LGBTQ+ History Museum up and running. At 40, Bobby has yet to have a meaningful relationship, seemingly fine with random Grindr meetups and his close-knit group of friends for emotional support. At a club, Bobby meets Aaron ( Luke Macfarlane ), a jock who hates his lawyer job, loves Garth Brooks , and keeps disappearing whenever Bobby tries to make a move on him. The connection between the mismatched couple is immediate, yet their disinterest in commitment makes it difficult for them to get close to each other. As these two get to know each other and start to form something close to a relationship, they start to see the pros and cons of getting together.

RELATED: 'Bros' Cast and Character Guide: Who's Who in the LGBTQ+ Rom Com

While Bros has sort of been marketed as an almost satire of rom-coms, Bros is decidedly a fairly straightforward rom-com, but as Bobby says early on, gay romance isn’t the same as straight romance. Love is love is love is actually bullshit, and Bros does a great job of showing how queer relationships can be fundamentally different from the heteronormative relationships we see in the movies. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan never had to deal with throuples, Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant never wrestled in bed and did poppers before having sex. Well, at least that we know of. But even though these types of relationships are unique in their own ways, Eichner and Stoller highlight just how beautiful and romantic this type of relationship that is too rarely seen in films can be.

Bros also seems to know its own importance as the first gay rom-com from a major studio and uses that as a way to slyly explore the history of LGBTQ+ in its own way via the museum. Stoller and Eichner drop in all sorts of details about the important moments and figure in queer history, but in a way that always manages to be entertaining or narratively important. Near the end of the film, Bobby states that even though queer people have been around since the beginning of time, it feels like they’re only now beginning to tell their own stories. With Bros , Eichner and everyone involved seems to understand just how major this film is, a necessary story that is finally being told.

But most importantly, Bros is one of the most hysterical comedies of the year, thanks to the fantastic writing and this tremendous cast. This film is packed with scene stealers, from Guy Branum as Bobby’s friend Henry, several excellent cameos (including one that fans of Billy on the Street will love) to the rest of the LGBTQ+ board that includes Jim Rash , Dot-Marie Jones , Eve Lindley , Ts Madison , and Miss Lawrence . No one is wasted here, and it’s fitting that with its packed cast, Bros sort of feels right in line with the other ensemble-heavy comedies produced by Judd Apatow .

Yet the real powerhouse of Bros is the relationship between Bobby and Aaron, and both Eichner and Macfarlane are perfect romantic leads to this story. Eichner gets to show that he deserves to be a star of the highest order, as he shows his vulnerability, his brashness, his romantic side, the sad reality of growing up gay, and, hell, he even gets to sing too. Apatow has often produced films that feel like a launching point for a comedian that deserved more attention, like Steve Carell in The 40-Year-Old Virgin or Pete Davidson in The King of Staten Island , but Bros might be the best example of this, showing everything Eichner has to offer. Similarly, as the “straight man” to Bobby, Macfarlane is equally charming, a bit more closed off and uncertain about what he wants, but always delightful and a character we always root for—even when he’s questioning if he wants a relationship with our lead. But together, Bobby and Aaron are one of the best rom-com couples in quite some time. Bros is packed with broad humor at times, but the film is at its best when it follows Bobby and Aaron getting to know each other, walking down a New York City street and talking together. The electric chemistry between these two is all Bros really needs.

Bros manages to both present how queer relationships are wholly different from straight relationships, but also how when it comes to rom-coms, love actually is love is love. Even though Bros is playing in a fairly well-trod formula, it still manages to feel new thanks to the refreshing angle that is shown here. Eichner and Stoller have written a film that plays to both of their strengths as storytellers, all while making one of the funniest and most romantic films of 2022. If this is just the beginning of queer people being able to tell their own stories, here’s hoping we get more that are as great as Bros .

Bros is now in theaters.

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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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‘Bros,’ the first big-studio R-rated gay rom-com, is for everyone

Star and co-writer Billy Eichner delivers a stream of wry (and relatable) one-liners out a fire hose filled with vinegar

“Go, LGBTQ people!” Billy Eichner crowed at the packed premiere of “Bros” at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month. The ensuing whistles, whoops and applause almost drowned out his parenthetical add-on: “But it really is a movie for everyone.”

He wasn’t wrong. “Bros,” which has been hotly anticipated as the first big-studio R-rated gay rom-com, definitely has universal appeal, if your universe happens to include anyone navigating the vagaries of love, lust and generational change. But like any successful comedy — or movie, for that matter — “Bros” succeeds in its specificity: in this case, gay life and culture that are brimming with foibles, contradictions, triumphs and failures just waiting to be mined for comic gold.

Eichner, who co-wrote and stars in “Bros,” has just the right spiky-and-sweet voice for the job. He plays Bobby Leiber, a cynical New York podcaster whose expertise is hidden gay histories and whose latest project is opening a museum dedicated to same. In the giddy whirlwind of the film’s opening section, Bobby narrates his life with the mordant panache of Woody Allen at his most dryly amusing. No sooner is he delivering an impassioned stemwinder on “the erasure of gay love over centuries” than he’s cutting to his daily life on Grindr, where the banal “Hey, what’s up?” manages to convey untold volumes of terror and promise in three little words (and a question mark).

Bobby is happy, comfortable in his skin and extremely lonely, a condition largely of his own compulsively critical making. “I support them, but I don’t trust them,” he says of his fellow gay men at one point. At another, he recoils from the rainbows-and-unicorns phrase “Love is love,” so often trumpeted by self-congratulatory straight liberals. “Love is not love,” he insists grumpily. In other words, it’s mortifyingly, confoundingly singular — and, for him at least, unknowable. One of Bobby’s funniest observations is the untapped market for an app aimed at gay men “who just want to talk actresses and go to sleep.”

Bobby’s wry one-liners, delivered by way of Eichner’s distinctive caustic sneer, blast out of a fire hose filled with vinegar throughout “Bros,” which was directed by Nicholas Stoller (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” “ Neighbors ”) from a script the two co-wrote. At its raunchiest moments — and there are more than a few — the film exists firmly in the world that Stoller helped create with producer Judd Apatow. Whereas Apatow’s past films have included their share of lame homophobic humor, here he lends his expertise to icky sight gags involving masturbation and one of the most hilarious group sex scenes possibly ever committed to film.

With its in-jokes, badinage-y dialogue and pacey editing, “Bros” makes for a breezy sendup of everything from the earnest excesses of identity politics — one of Bobby’s museum board members wants a display like the blue whale at the Museum of Natural History “except it’s a lesbian” — to throuples and the resentments of aging boomers and Gen Xers toward their millennial colleagues. “We got AIDS, they got ‘Glee,’ ” Bobby snipes. But his tone begins to soften ever so slightly once he meets Aaron, a hunky, no-drama sweetheart played with disarming sincerity by Hallmark movie stalwart Luke Macfarlane.

Forget whether this marriage can be saved: Can the courtship even begin? That’s the question chased throughout a knowing comedy of modern-day manners that includes a generous helping of fun cameos — Bowen Yang as a dismissive producer, Debra Messing as a burlesque of herself — as well as deftly deployed zingers and a thoroughgoing dismantling of hookup culture in all its liberated glory and self-abnegating humiliation. “Bros” got its start as a bit that Eichner did on his television show “Billy on the Street,” when he wore a turned-around baseball cap and khakis to inhabit the persona of a generic heterosexual dude. He gets to revisit the bit here, but thankfully, the movie feels like more than an extended track. Underneath the acid and attitude, “Bros” turns out to be thoughtful meditation on the multitudes we all contain, and how we choose which ones to bring to the party.

R. At area theaters. Contains strong sexual content, language throughout and some drug use. 115 minutes.

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Review: ‘Bros’ makes rom-com history and then joins in it

This image released by Universal Pictures shows, from left, Billy Eichner, Harvey Fierstein and Luke Macfarlane in a scene from “Bros.” (Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Luke Macfarlane, left, and Billy Eichner in a scene from “Bros.” (Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Luke Macfarlane, right, and Billy Eichner in a scene from “Bros.” (Nicole Rivelli/Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Luke Macfarlane, left, and Billy Eichner in a scene from “Bros.” (Nicole Rivelli/Universal Pictures via AP)

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“Bros,” the latest romantic comedy to hit theaters, is absolutely revolutionary. And totally conventional. It’s a film where both extremes can be true at the same time.

The revolutionary part comes from it being the first gay rom-com produced and distributed by a major American studio. And yet it hews very closely to the classic rom-com formula, right down to one of the star-crossed lovers suddenly realizing he’s in love and sprinting to reunite with the other as music swells.

That’s the genius of “Bros” — telling LGBTQ stories and wrapping it in a familiar storyline that everyone can relate to. At one point, we see our hero watching “When Harry Met Sally” and we quietly cheer as the universe of rom-coms just got another satellite. Some people may complain that it fits too neatly into the straight-people film formula, but revolutions weren’t built in a movie.

Billy Eichner stars as Bobby Lieber, a slightly nerdy gay podcaster-turned-museum executive who has hit the age of 40 without having had a serious romantic relationship. The script by Nicholas Stoller and Eichner leans into the schtick Eichner has built as a loud, opinionated comic on “Billy on the Street” but creates room for a wounded, insecure hero.

Eichner is navigating the fraught world of modern dating in the New York City gay community, which includes graceless app hookups, steroid use, dance-club ogling, legions of commitment-phobes and an emphasis on the physical and superficial — so just like straights!

When sparks fly between him and a hunky meathead — played understated and soulfully by Luke Macfarlane — it’s clear that opposites attract. Our hero has a sunken chest, an unwavering belief that Abraham Lincoln was a closeted gay man and a high voice; the muscly hunk is a fan of Garth Brooks, hockey and “The Office.” Yet he can also see to the core of our hero: “Getting angry at things is your brand,” he tells him.

The filmmakers make sure “Bros” isn’t a sanitized view of gay love, earning an R-rating for nudity, sex, lusty kissing and group encounters like throuples and a very funny, awkward four-way with a random guy named Steve. In many parts, it feels very much like every lingering, passionate kiss is blissfully punching through some sort of wall.

Stoller, who also directs, and Eichner load the script with plenty of gentle humor at non-gay targets. “Gay sex was more fun when straight people were uncomfortable,” says one character. And a couple of recurring gags involve straight actors winning awards for playing gay — Benedict Cumberbatch, look out! — and the Hallmark Chanel’s supposed embrace of non-hetero themes, like with the fictional bisexual titles “Christmas With Either” and the group rom-com “A Holly, Polly Christmas.”

Gay stereotypes also get celebrated and pierced — endless voguing, Grindr photos, “Schitt’s Creek” love, Barbra Streisand adoration and internal divisions among the LGBTQ community. Deborah Messing from “Will & Grace” makes a hilarious cameo (“I am not every gay man’s best friend!” she wails) and Kaitlin Jenner is mocked as a “trans-terrorist.” A key moment is when Eichner pierces the inclusive slogan “Love Is Love” with his retort “No, it’s not.” Gay love, he says, has different obstacles and complications and ramifications.

In his love affair, identity becomes the drama. Bobby is fiercely proud of being gay and not apologizing for it, while his love interest is more quiet about his sexuality, fatefully asking his lover to tone it down one night while meeting his parents. “A little less yourself,” he explains. “I want them to like you.” Everyone will understand what that means. That’s straight out of a John Hughes rom-com.

It’s not a perfect film — the first half sags a little, the jump in Bobby’s career is jarring and some soliloquies land with a thud — but name us a perfect rom-com. This one has what the best have: heart, good faith and good old fashioned love. Welcome, “Bros,” to the canon.

“Bros,” a Universal Pictures release that hits theaters Friday, is rated R for strong sexual content, some drug use and language throughout. Running time: 115 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Online: https://www.brosthemovie.com/

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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Bros Is at Its Best When It Forgets About Making History

For months now, Billy Eichner has been touting the milestones represented by his new film, Bros . It’s the first gay rom-com ever made* (*by a major studio). It’s the first movie* (*at a major studio) to star and be written by an openly gay man. It’s not some indie or “some streaming thing which feels disposable,” as he said to Variety , words he then clarified after they were interpreted as a slight against fellow gay rom-com Fire Island , which premiered on Hulu in June. Also, it’s about 40-year-olds who fuck, not a coming-out story about someone fumbling their first kiss, like roughly 90 percent of gay stories onscreen are, he declared to GQ . Eichner has done so much work to load down Bros with qualified historical significance, and to insist that it’s not like those other gay movies, that it’s a pleasant surprise to finally watch the thing and find it to be sexy, messy, and joyful, and informed less by a sense of its own importance than by a vague uncertainty that it may have arrived too late to the party. It is, after all, a rueful ode to a white masc-centric gay culture that the movie understands to be passé and exclusionary even as it has been its protagonist’s whole world.

In that, as well as in an appearance from Bowen Yang, it has something in common with Fire Island — the bittersweet love story at its core is less with a person than with the idea of gay community, which its main characters value even as they feel consigned to its outskirts. Of course, in the case of Bros , the man that Bobby Leiber (Eichner) falls for is representative of so much that that community prizes that he feels, at least at first, like a symbol. Aaron Shepard, played by repeat Hallmark star Luke Macfarlane, is a muscled hunk of a lawyer who likes Garth Brooks and group sex, and who’s just as commitment-averse as the avowedly independent Bobby. When the pair survey a dance floor during their meet-cute, Aaron points out one of the dancers and, by way of small talk, says, “I’m supposed to fuck him and his husband later.” Bobby is as embittered by the ease with which Aaron moves through their world as he is by himself for being attracted to the guy, and yet the two strike up a sparky anti-courtship in which they feel their way through what a relationship between them might look like.

Bros was directed by Forgetting Sarah Marshall ’s Nicholas Stoller, who co-wrote the script with Eichner, and produced by Judd Apatow, and there’s a familiar Apatovian shagginess to the production. It’s not overlong, but it’s prone to digressions that can make it feel like it’s stuffed with every stray idea and rant that Eichner scrawled in a notebook over a decade, from adventures on Grindr to a bit about his singing voice. For the most part, they’re funny enough for this not to be a complaint, and Stoller and editor Daniel Gabbe have excellent timing with cutting on or to a punchline. Still, Bobby’s the newly appointed director of the first-ever LGBTQ museum, and the movie takes pains to establish him as the host of a successful gay-history podcast first, mainly to give him an excuse for a disgusted monologue into the mic about how he was approached by a Hollywood producer to write the kind of gay romantic-comedy “a straight guy might watch with his girlfriend .” An odd, vestigial storyline about Aaron’s high-school friend is only there to reflect Bobby’s insecurities. And when Bobby walks in on Aaron injecting testosterone, he disapproves until Aaron retorts that it “doesn’t seem to bother you when you’re obsessing over my body,” and the issue drops.

Aaron — whose traditional masculinity hides some internalized homophobia — represents so much that loud, militant, concave-chested Bobby has resented and yet wants, and the film can’t quite square his resistance with his desire. It’s better for it. When Bros begins, it’s hard to imagine how a plausible romance is going to struggle out from everything the movie feels it must represent with regard to bigotry, desirability, being visibly gay, and having relationships that don’t feel beholden to heteronormative ideals. It’s only when Bobby is allowed to show his fear, and Aaron becomes more than just a handsome blank, that they actually start to seem like individuals who like one another. While Eichner plays an entertainingly outsize version of his own public persona — opinionated, wry, occasionally annoying — Aaron isn’t as successfully filled out, though Macfarlane has a dry deadpan that makes the character more stealthily funny from the start than Bobby wants to acknowledge. But, as accessorized by a variety of supporting characters played by Guillermo Diaz, Miss Lawrence, Jim Rash, Monica Raymund, an especially fun Guy Branum, and others, the pair’s fumblings toward a connection have an understated sweetness. For all Eichner’s intentions to make history with the movie, it’s at its best when it frees itself from representing anything more than two characters falling in love. That gives us more space to laud its pioneering work in putting awkward foursomes onscreen, anyway.

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Bros Buckles Under the Weight of Its Own Masculinity Complex

By Naveen Kumar

This review contains mild spoilers for Bros. Billy Eichner is sitting in an Adirondack chair, overlooking the scenic shores of Provincetown , a gay-friendly hamlet on the tip of Cape Cod where a summer getaway can cost as much as a trip to Paris. His character Bobby has just raised the $5 million he needs to fully fund the LGBTQ+ history museum where he is the Head Gay in Charge. Beside him, bathed in a warm twilight glow, is Luke Macfarlane’s Aaron, whose abs rise and fall in the kind of extreme close-up usually reserved for nature documentaries.

Bobby is relishing his recent professional victory (in which Aaron plays a key role) and reflecting on the challenges he has faced to reach this career high. Years ago, he was told that he was too swishy to be an actor, that his voice was too camp to deliver the evening news, and he should stick to writing (Bobby now hosts a successful podcast). As he watched less qualified straight men skip past him on the ladder, Bobby says he put his head down and worked hard, counting on no one except himself.

It’s the kind of striving-from-the-margins story that, in 2022, we might expect to hear from someone who has a bit more stacked against them than Bobby does. Bros , in theaters today, opens with Bobby’s narration from behind the mic of his podcast, called The 11th Brick . That title refers to the likely position taken up by cis white men in the Stonewall Riots, behind people like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, whose tenacity and courage, borne out of the challenges they faced as Black and brown trans women and sex workers, sparked the modern-day movement for queer liberation.

Now, it’s Eichner who is leading what’s being hailed as a historic, if long overdue, first — a big-studio, R-rated gay rom-com written by and starring an openly gay man, and with a principal cast of all LGBTQ+ actors. Fire Island dropped on Hulu without a theatrical run. Love, Simon was geared toward young adults. The Broken Hearts Club was a low-budget indie and came out more than 20 years ago. Bros , a wide-release from Universal Pictures produced by Judd Apatow, indeed signals a significant milestone in popular media. Finally, the multiplex masses will understand what it’s like to stage an elaborate photo of your bare ass just to get blocked by a thot on Grindr.

Bros is rife with insider jokes like these also pitched toward the uninitiated, wrapped in the familiar packaging of a Nora Ephron-style meeting of opposites, one of whom has always been deemed “too much.” It’s biting and sharp-witted, an assured crowd-pleaser that also aims to be instructive. Perhaps it was always going to be someone like Eichner who’d be the first to step through a door like this, manned by Hollywood gatekeepers among whom he would not appear out of place in a lineup. And no single movie was ever going to adequately represent LGBTQ+ people writ large to mainstream (read: straight) audiences. It’s impossible to make legible on screen a sprawling and varied culture paradoxically united by difference.

Still, Bros is cognizant of the pressures and expectations that come with being a cinematic first, and tries to offer an inclusive education, even as it remains focused on a central love plot between cis white gay men. But in trying to uphold its dual commitments to the particular and the universal, to romance and representation, Bros winds up replicating many of the dynamics it seems to want to criticize. The most marginalized queer people are positioned firmly at the margins of the movie, where they are largely presented as totems or caricatures, for the benefit of expedience or for laughs. Bros , as befits its title, instead centers gay culture and its fixation on markers of masculinity, an infatuation it wrestles with but ultimately embraces rather than skewers.

Introducing various facets of queer culture while poking fun at them in the same breath is a tough needle to thread, and Eichner and director Nicholas Stoller pull it off to some degree. Mostly, this happens around the conference table of the LGBTQ+ history museum, where Bobby leads team meetings in which each letter of the alphabet has a seat at the table, an ensemble that includes Dot-Marie Jones, Ts Madison , and Miss Lawrence. Of course, there’s truth to the stereotypes that inform these characters — a tough and always sensible lesbian, a bi guy hypersenstive to erasure, a trans woman keeping her anger in check, a gender-nonconforming person who’s always open to holding space. Bros toes a line between cleverly lampooning these associations while still using them as shorthand to substitute for a lack of deeper characterizations. Why not make a fierce doll the boss and Bobby her VP? Or throw in a more socially disadvantaged second banana to lend a bit of perspective to Bobby’s hand-wringing over his own difference?

Samantha Riedel

Samantha Allen

Abby Monteil

Quispe López

Bobby drops occasional self-conscious quips about his relative privilege in relation to other queer people, starting with the title of his podcast. He also takes advantage of it at their expense, like when he trashes a museum exhibit in a roid-rage tantrum that would lead another of his colleagues to be fired and escorted off the premises. And such is his right! Rom-com protagonists are supposed to be a mess, to get away with behavior that no one else would, and to maintain a certain obliviousness to their own desires and contradictions.

In this case, Bobby’s blind spot is that despite all of his protests to the contrary, he is in fact hopelessly conventional, enamored by the standards of masculinity from which he feels himself set apart, a bro through and through. Bobby has a concave chest instead of pecs; he considers himself loud and smart and complicated, qualities he’s convinced couldn’t possibly interest Macfarlane’s Aaron, a literal Hallmark muscle hunk who could have any guy he wanted (and often does). One of the primary obstacles to an honest and lasting romance between them is that Aaron exemplifies the ideals that Bobby both covets and chafes against.

There is a lot of truth to the push and pull that Bobby feels toward bro culture, totally turned on by its embodiment and yet salty about his perceived exclusion from it. So many gay men (including myself) can relate, and it’s meaningful to see that reflected on a big screen for a broad audience. But while there’s a lot of pointing to the injustice of it all, Bros doesn’t question the standards of attractiveness — extreme fitness, masculine presentation, and yes, whiteness — that Aaron embodies and by which Bobby (and so many gay men) measure worthiness.

It would be an undue expectation to pile on a movie already shouldering too many if only Bros didn’t end up reinforcing the very obsession with body image and masculinity it set out to critique. What if Bobby confronted his own devotion to hot bodies rather than simply railing at the frustration that desiring them causes him? Could Bobby have wound up with a different love interest who isn’t conventionally “hot,” thereby teaching him something about what makes someone hot to begin with? Sure, but hot people sell movie tickets, and this is a high-stakes commercial venture.

It doesn’t help that there are almost no femme-acting gay male characters in the movie, as if to make up for years of Hollywood history that refused to see us in any other way. The passing appearance of a flaming queen on the dance floor — which prompts Bobby to exclaim, “Gay guys are so stupid!” — says more about his own hang-ups than it does about the intelligence of the voguing boys he swats out of his way, leaving the club in a huff (over a basic muscle bro, of course).

In a closing salvo at the museum’s grand opening, Bobby reflects that LGBTQ+ people are not a monolith, and that we are just at the beginning of being able to tell our stories. Of course, he’s right. A major studio comedy in which butt sex between men isn’t a panic-fueled joke but an actual demonstration of affection counts as a big step in Hollywood. And maybe some moviegoers who need to recognize the humanity of white men who love other white men will finally do so. It’s certainly a start, however past due.

But the way that we tell stories — how they reach people and what they mean — has changed as well. Without the cumbersome mandate of appealing to — and potentially edifying — the broadest possible audience of a studio film, queer creators have been telling bold, specific, and challenging stories that reach viewers in increasingly varied ways, often right where we live. Those artists, too, have watched as others achieved career highs while they continued working hard and believing in themselves. Hopefully Bros opens the door for their stories to be heard next.

Bros is in movie theaters now.

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‘bros’ review: billy eichner in a gay rom-com that’s good enough to make you wish it were better.

Eichner and Luke Macfarlane play reluctant lovers in the latest comedy from Nicholas Stoller ('Neighbors'), premiering in Toronto.

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Eichner (who, let’s get it out of the way, proves totally equipped to be a feature’s co-leading man) plays Bobby, a podcaster with a passion for gay history. Early on he gets his dream job, as the first director of a new museum of LGBTQ+ culture. His board meetings (the closest the film gets to satire, though they really aren’t that) are a mild nightmare of identity-politics squabbling, with everyone worried that their part of this story won’t get the emphasis it deserves.

Aaron’s outlook on romance mirrors Bobby’s. But after a few “this isn’t a date” encounters, including one that winds up as an awkward foursome, the two have a fight that turns hot and eventually leads to actual tenderness. The second or third song that could’ve been in When Harry Met Sally plays quietly in the background, and you know a non-ironic montage involving Central Park and Christmas trees isn’t far off. (It doesn’t stop at needle-drops: Bros composer Marc Shaiman arranged music for When Harry Met Sally as well.)

Banter between the two men stays very funny in the first half, with Bobby taking potshots at Aaron’s meathead tastes in music, movies and men. But of course, Aaron’s attraction to gym rats makes the tall but unbulky Bobby insecure. And he acts out, ruining his first day with Aaron’s visiting parents by turning their tourist visit into a nonstop lecture on gay history.

Eager to explain the chip on his shoulder that’s about to wreck this relationship, the screenplay now does a lot more telling than showing. One long, emotional monologue near the beach in Provincetown (right after an amusing Bowen Yang cameo) gets the job done, showing that Eichner can act and airing a lifetime’s worth of Bobby’s resentment over being told he was too “flamboyant” to succeed. But a speechy tendency crops up several other places as well, sounding especially off-key given that the writers have already proven they can get many of these points across while still being funny.

But the suits needn’t have worried. Bros is so steeped in mainstream pop culture, with its run-to-him epiphanies and utterly implausible public declarations of love, that it was never going to alienate anybody but homophobes. Bobby is right to complain that “love is love” is a bogus PR slogan for gay acceptance; it’s something nobody who’s been in love more than once should say with a straight (sorry) face. But when it comes to rom-coms, a love story is a love story. They’re nearly all the same, nearly all phony, even when their phoniness is saying something true or when they have enough charm that you spend your life trying to believe them.

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Smart, self-aware laughs are among the pros of ‘Bros’

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At the beginning of “Bros,” a popular podcaster named Bobby (Billy Eichner) tells his listeners that he was recently asked for feedback on a gay romantic comedy — one that was pitched to him as a sweet, funny, accessible movie that would appeal to straight and gay audiences alike. But Bobby, outspoken on most topics in general and LGBTQ representation in particular, blanches at the notion that there’s anything “alike” about it. Gay and straight experiences aren’t interchangeable, he says, and it’s ridiculous to expect the former to conform to Hollywood’s monogamy-minded feel-good imperatives.

“Love is not love,” Bobby declares, demolishing a common bit of throw-pillow wisdom and setting “Bros” itself a pretty tricky challenge. This movie knows precisely what it is — a rare same-sex romantic comedy released by a major studio — and as such, it also knows it’s duty-bound to both challenge and uphold certain conventions. It must thumb its nose at what Bobby dismisses as staid heteronormative ideals (monogamy, marriage, etc.) while still giving us a couple worth rooting for beyond the length of a four-way orgy, to name one (actually two) of the movie’s bawdier set pieces.

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That’s a tough needle to thread, and you could accuse “Bros” of trying to preempt some of its own criticism. This movie, which Eichner co-wrote with Nicholas Stoller, talks a pretty good game, but it also hopes you’ll be sufficiently disarmed by its scabrous wit and R-rated, slap-happy sex scenes to forgive — and maybe even love — its final swerve into happily-ever-after uplift. It’s hardly a spoiler to note that Bobby will soon meet the man of his dreams, or that this (yes) sweet, funny and accessible movie means to send them and the viewer home in a good mood.

That it succeeds as well as it does can be chalked up to a lot of different things, including the pleasures of Provincetown in the fall, the sights of New York at Christmastime and the unerring perfection of Luke Macfarlane’s five o’clock shadow. Macfarlane plays Aaron, the baseball-capped Adonis whose ripped physique catches Bobby’s eye one night across a crowded dance floor. They’re at a launch party for a gay dating app (the name of which alone is worth the price of admission), though neither Bobby nor Aaron is really looking for action, let alone something more serious. Still, there’s a prickly opposites-attract energy to their first encounter, one that deepens after they get past a few awkward text exchanges and start hanging out.

Even so, the relationship — one of a few words they’re reluctant to use — requires more than a few adjustments. Aaron, dismissed by a mutual friend as “very hot and very boring,” initially seems attracted to uncomplicated hunky types like himself, including a recently uncloseted high-school buddy, Josh (Ryan Faucett), who pops up every so often to complicate the plot and inflame Bobby’s jealousy. And to Bobby’s particular horror, Aaron’s entertainment tastes run toward “The Hangover” and Garth Brooks; he has no idea who Debra Messing is.

He’ll eventually find out, since Messing has the most extended of several amusing cameos in a movie that worships, mocks and sometimes casts a slew of LGBTQ audience favorites. Pop-culture wisecrackery is of course a staple of mainstream romantic comedies, especially those that hail, like this one, from the Judd Apatow stable. (This is the latest Apatow production directed by Stoller, whose earlier credits include “The Five-Year Engagement” and “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.”) But the movie, taking its cues from Bobby’s expertise, moves past breezy Apatovian allusiveness into a realm of media criticism as snarky as it is scholarly.

There are jokes about a TV network’s cynical explosion of queer-themed output (“A Holly, Poly Christmas” is one of the better ones) and affectionate eye rolls at the sanitized, sentimentalized depictions of gay men on “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” and “Schitt’s Creek.” There are also jabs at prestige dramas like “Brokeback Mountain” and “Milk,” mainly for their Oscar-friendly practice of casting straight actors as gay characters destined for tragedy.

“Bros,” which has little use for straight actors (or tragedy), sets itself up as a meaningful corrective. Though hardly the only gay romantic comedy of note to emerge in recent months (like Hulu’s “Fire Island,” whose Bowen Yang pops up here as a lofty Provincetown millionaire), it does boast the notable big-studio precedent of an entirely LGBTQ principal cast, albeit one whose racial and sexual diversity happens to prop up a love story between two white, cisgender, gay men — something the movie acknowledges with both a wink and a wince.

Bobby, for his part, is well aware of his privilege, which he vigorously mocks on his podcast and tries to keep in check while serving on the board of a soon-to-open LGBTQ history museum, the first such institution in New York City or anywhere in America. He’s spent most of his professional life thinking about and advocating for queer visibility, which makes him a shrewd if convenient protagonist for a movie with some of the same concerns. He wants to educate straight people whose knowledge of queer history begins and ends with AIDS and Stonewall, and also to jolt his overly complacent LGBTQ peers into a more vigilant state of allyship.

Which brings us back to Aaron, who’s generally been content to go with the flow, drifting through his lucrative, unsatisfying career as a probate lawyer and his relationships with his mild-mannered family. Aaron is open about his sexuality, but he maintains a steady commitment to not rocking the boat — unlike Bobby, who’s intent on capsizing the damn thing. The roots of Bobby’s defiance are laid bare in a beautifully written and acted beachside monologue in which he talks about having been instructed all his life to constrain his queerness, by everyone from bigoted authority figures to his own supportive, identity-affirming parents. His refusal to compromise any longer is, for Aaron, a challenge, an eye-opener and a source of genuine admiration.

Aaron challenges Bobby in similarly valuable ways. Easily dismissed as, in Bobby’s words, a “big, bro-y meathead idiot,” he’s a reminder that smart, emotionally perceptive people don’t always announce their virtues or their values through a megaphone. Watching these two men realize their mutual Mr. Rightness is the chief pleasure of “Bros,” especially since Macfarlane, with his easygoing vibes and puppy-dog eyes, makes such a natural foil for Eichner’s unbridled exuberance. At times Bobby suggests a cross between two of Eichner’s better-known roles, merging the hyper-eloquent comic belligerence of “Parks and Recreation’s” Craig Middlebrook with the singing chops of “The Lion King’s” Timon the meerkat .

It would be unreasonable to expect the movie’s various second bananas to be nearly as well drawn, though I do wish that “Bros” didn’t treat them quite so flippantly. Bobby’s bickersome museum colleagues sometimes make up a charmingly intersectional peanut gallery and sometimes feel like an assortment of tokenizing punchlines. Dot-Marie Jones plays a physically imposing lesbian, Jim Rash plays a snippy bisexual and Miss Lawrence plays a gender-nonconforming person who cultivates a Zen-like serenity. They’re reminders, perhaps, of the folly of trying to make a movie that will represent or satisfy everyone. Which doesn’t mean that they, and “Bros,” don’t make for enjoyable company.

Rated: R, for strong sexual content, language throughout and some drug use Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes Playing: Starts Sept. 30 in general release

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Bros review: lgbtq+ romantic comedy goes mainstream (& does it better).

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Bros was helmed by noted comedy filmmaker Nicholas Stoller, who previously directed Forgetting Sarah Marshall , the Neighbors films, and The Five-Year Engagement , along with writing and/or producing credits on Trainwreck , The Muppets , and Undeclared , among others. Stoller partnered with Eichner on the Bros script , blending Eichner's trademark edge and biting wit with Stoller's mastery of comedic timing mixed with sincerity. Bros doesn't necessarily break new ground in its formula, following a relatively straightforward series of advances and setbacks for Bobby and Aaron's relationship. Still, the rom-com templating works as subversion — which is an intentional choice here — as the writing team provides an uncompromising and simultaneously charming exploration of gay relationships.

Bros follows Bobby Lieber (Billy Eichner), successful writer and podcaster-turned-curator of the National Museum of LGBTQ+ History and Culture. He enjoys his life as a self-reliant single man and freedom from care (so that he's never disappointed by the gay dating scene). That is until Bobby meets Aaron (Luke Macfarlane) a meathead estate attorney who doesn't adhere to Bobby's own stereotypes, but shares his disdain for vulnerability and monogamy. In spite of their individual differences and romantic reservations, the pair spark and, as their connection grows, Bobby and Aaron are forced to confront the insecurities, shame, and regrets that have formerly prevented them from forming healthy relationships.

Related: Bros Trailer: Billy Eichner's LGBTQ+ Rom-Com Explores Modern Dating

To that end, Bros isn't just a gay rom-com, it's a candid exploration (and unabashed celebration) of the innumerable ways that people express and experience love in the modern world, and one that acknowledges the countless souls who made it possible to celebrate that love openly — many of whom didn't live long enough to see it. In fact, one of Bros' most insightful and self-aware points arises from Bobby's own struggles with his place in the LGBTQ+ community as a cisgender white gay man in a world where sexism, racial stereotypes, body dysmorphia, and gender identity produces extra challenges for his friends to overcome that even he cannot fully understand. In spite of the good that he's done in the world, Bobby isn't the "hero" of his story, he's packed with genuine flaws — not just shortcomings to further the plot — that provide authentic insight into the experiences, both good and bad, that shaped his worldview. The result is a heartwarming and, at times, challenging but always authentic window into the world that Bobby (and many others) navigate each day.

While some moviegoers might be surprised to hear that Eichner, known best for Funny or Die/truTV 's " Billy on the Street" skits (along with supporting appearances in everything from Parks and Recreation to Impeachment: American Crime Story ), would be leading an introspective romantic comedy, the actor meets the moment. Eichner's performance is vulnerable and self-aware, in particular in a monologue on the beach in Provincetown, providing several truly gut-wrenching scenes of naked insight inspired by the actor's own experiences, regrets, and realizations.

Of course, it's fun to see Eichner lean into the rowdy and opinionated persona that make his comedy so enjoyable, and Bros affords Eichner plenty of opportunities to push limits and draw hilarious reactions out of supporting characters. That said, it is the more reflective and intimate scenes that have been crafted in his script with Stoller that will endear audiences to the comedian and, hopefully, open doors for Eichner to explore additional drama work in the future.

Macfarlane, who starred in a number of Hallmark TV movies (of which Bros repeatedly pokes fun), leads the supporting cast and plays a great foil, both in comedy and in chemistry, to Eichner. Macfarlane isn't afforded as many scene-stealing moments of social insight as Eichner, but he imbues Aaron with sincerity and heart, ensuring that, in spite of the character's personal shortcomings, viewers will understand why Bobby is drawn to him and want to root for them as a couple. Stoller and Eichner made certain the rest of the cast is diverse and representative of the LGBTQ+ community. In fact, Bros is the first movie with an all-LGBTQ+ principle cast , with supporting roles for Ts Madison, Guy Branum, Eve Lindley, Dot-Marie Jones, Jim Rash, Symone, as well as Bowen Yang, and the iconic Harvey Fierstein, just to name a few. Even though many of the actors have portrayed LGBTQ+ characters before, there's something truly moving about seeing them get to embrace characters in a film that makes an earnest effort to celebrate modern sex, gender, and romance in all their forms.

Ultimately, Bros hews close to its romantic comedy inspirations and audiences will, undoubtedly, be able to anticipate incoming plot beats ahead of time. Yet, in this case, a familiar storyline only highlight what's unique all the more. Eichner and Stoller use their romantic comedy template as an effective framework for juxtaposition and an earnest exploration of Bobby and Aaron's ups, downs, and personal revelations. In the end, Bros is packed with equal parts irreverent comedy and universal truth, as well as a clear message for its viewers: Love is love.

Bros opens in theaters on September 30th. The film is 115 minutes long and is rated R for strong sexual content, some drug use and language throughout.

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Bros Reviews

I’ve never experienced such whiplash during a movie

Full Review | Apr 24, 2024

It did not need to have a theatrical release…throw it on HBOMax

While the film does a fine job taking romantic comedy tropes and giving them the gay treatment, they remain tropes.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 5, 2023

Bros is a genuine, authentic, insanely hilarious breath of fresh air. Clever satirical comedy rips out loud back-to-back laughs throughout the entire runtime without ever causing viewers to lose their ear-to-ear smile.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jul 25, 2023

A down right heartfelt, hilarious, & most importantly RAUNCHY! They truly don’t make films like this anymore & Bros breaks through as a must watch! Billy is perfect, Luke is a revelation, & Stoller is back with one of his best.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Bros stands alone as an honest and funny depiction of two cis gay men not sure of what they’re looking for. They just know they don’t want to do it alone. It is laugh-out-loud funny at a time when we desperately need to be laughing in a movie theater.

Bros is too obsessed with its own ideas of grandeur. Like the first-of-its-kind LGBTQ history museum Bobby is trying to open, Bros believes that it will single-handedly save queer cinema. However, queer cinema never needed saving in the first place.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2023

Eichner has made something that he can be proud of and hopefully it will open the door for more diverse queer voices to be heard.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 14, 2023

The funniest movie in a long time.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Feb 6, 2023

A resounding reset of the rom-com, Bros injects a modern reality into a stagnant genre.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 6, 2023

Bros is one of the best romantic comedies of the decade, offering plenty of laughs and maybe even a few tears by the end of it

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Feb 2, 2023

Beneath its sometimes too-obvious meta examination of commercialized queer romance and comedy, Bros manages a sincere exploration of what it means to experience and depict queer love in its truly radical nature.

Full Review | Original Score: 7.5/10 | Jan 4, 2023

Bobby and Aaron both look surprised, as we always are by love. Bros is wonderfully funny, and quietly subversive. Take your parents.

Full Review | Dec 23, 2022

Bros warmly embraces the cosy conventions of a boy meets boy love story and tempers emotional gooeyness with the acerbic wit of lead actor Billy Eichner.

Full Review | Original Score: 7.5/10 | Dec 17, 2022

A thoughtful, tremendously funny treat and one of the best comedies of recent years, consider Bros worthy of a fist bump.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 16, 2022

Bros is a sweet, raunchy R comedy filled with a positive message and indelible performances especially by Eichner himself.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Dec 10, 2022

If the film lacks something, it's being more self-aware, not so much in reference to the clichés of the LGBTQ+ community (there are a few mentions of that), but more to the stereotypes of gender and romance in American cinema. Full review in Spanish.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 30, 2022

Riffing on romcom conventions while also shamelessly indulging in them, this is a breezy, enjoyable romp that does a good job of commenting on the differences between gay and straight dating culture.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 28, 2022

While there’s a sweet story buried in there, the film tries to tackle the entire LGBTQ+ experience and loses focus of its purpose.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 26, 2022

Love it or hate it, Bros makes a convincing case for more varied, more sex-positive romcoms in Hollywood.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 19, 2022

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Bros review: A big gay romcom that’s a big old mess

Blighted by discourse – from detractors, supporters and its star himself – this tries too hard to be all things to all people, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Nicholas Stoller. Starring: Billy Eichner, Luke Macfarlane, Guy Branum, Ts Madison, Monica Raymund, Guillermo Diaz, Bowen Yang. 15, 116 minutes.

Bros comes bearing discourse wounds. After the much-hyped gay romcom bellyflopped its US release, its star and co-writer Billy Eichner raged against the dying buzz on Twitter. America’s “straight people, especially in certain parts of the country, just didn’t show up for Bros ”, he declared, before urging anyone who isn’t a “homophobic weirdo” to check it out. Then came the think pieces: did Bros flop because of homophobia? Or because the romcom is dead? Or… because it’s a bad movie? Unfortunately, it’s the last one, since Bros is a big old mess.

A thrum of resentment simmers just under Bros ’ metropolitan shine. Playing a perpetually single New York podcaster named Bobby, Eichner (who also co-writes) spends much of his film barking opinions at anyone unlucky enough to be nearby. He sneers at everything from unconventional monogamy and men with abs to the supposed heteronormative evils of Schitt’s Creek . Everything is terrible: straight actors playing gay characters and the straight audiences who love them; gay men more interested in working out than exploring gay history; gay men whose voices sound “too straight”; gay men whose voices sound “too gay”. Bobby isn’t so much a character as a living newspaper op-ed by the most exhausting columnist in the world.

Bros ’ biggest problem is attempting to marry this kind of hectoring misanthropy with the conventions of an expensive romantic comedy. At a club, Bobby meets gym bro Aaron (Luke Macfarlane), who serves as a respite from an endless string of emotionless hook-ups and stilted Grindr chats. On screen, their romance lacks chemistry, heat or any of the sparkling back-and-forth that fuels romcoms – but they plough on regardless. Their dates unfold against an orangey, New York spring; they take summer sojourns to Cape Cod. It’s as if a mean, judgy cyborg and his himbo love interest have been dropped into a Nora Ephron movie.

In better hands, this could have been an interestingly cynical take on queer love on film – white gay misery rather than Meg Ryan cuteness. But that would clash with the kind of movie Bros wants to be. It wants the Woody Allen neuroses and the When Harry Met Sally wanders through Manhattan, despite scorning that very kind of movie at every turn. It also wants to be an inclusive project that reminds audiences of great queer strides in history, and features an almost entirely queer cast taken from across the racial and gender spectrum. But that grows increasingly insincere as the movie’s bi, lesbian, trans and non-binary supporting characters – and its queer people of colour entirely – are given absolutely nothing to do beyond embody shorthand caricatures. A scene at the film’s climax in which a non-binary person of colour is kicked off a stage so Eichner can sing a seemingly endless love song to his white, masc boyfriend is almost too apt a metaphor.

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By attempting to be everything to everyone, Bros sets itself up to fail. You can feel that it carries the burden of being one of the first of its kind, just as Eichner’s Twitter implosion in the wake of the film’s release felt tinged with hurt and grief – a panic that its financial failure could have repercussions for gay cinema far beyond Eichner himself. But all that weight – much of it, admittedly, self-inflicted – is visible on screen. Bros lumbers when it should glide, lectures when it should joke. Wherever you fall on the Kinsey scale, you’ll probably find it a miserable experience.

‘Bros’ is in cinemas from 28 October

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