Isn't It Bro-mantic?

This past weekend, a rarity arrived in movie theaters: a romantic comedy centered on a gay couple, featuring an almost-entirely LGBT+ cast. Bros was written by star Billy Eichner and director Nicolas Stoller, and the hope was for a movie that would attract gay and straight audiences alike.

Unfortunately, theaters remain in a COVID fog where only a slice of movies actually attract people to leave their homes, and a gay rom-com was entirely out of that slice. Bros opened in 4th place, earning under $5 million (half of what was originally projected), probably ensuring that studios will resume shunting their LGBT content, however worthy, to streaming services for the foreseeable future.

In the case of Bros, I do get that there's another factor looming large: Billy Eichner himself. The entertainment persona he's cultivated for himself is "brash to the point of obnoxious." Assuming you know who he is, you're probably either going to think he's a) funny; or b) annoying. This goes beyond the comedic antics of, say, a polarizing star like a Jim Carrey or an Adam Sandler -- Eichner is most known for literally accosting people on the street.

Fittingly, this subtext becomes text in the movie Bros. A major element of this rom-com story arc has to do with Eichner's outsized personality, and whether he should "tone it down" in certain situations. It goes right to the heart of a major message of this movie, that "love is love is love" is not in fact true -- there are aspects of the gay experience that are not "just the same" as love between a straight couple. This movie's main character talks about calibrating just How Much Gay strikes the right balance between "Personal Truth" and "Making Others Comfortable," and it's a deep and heartfelt theme to raise in a largely light-hearted movie.

But it is largely light-hearted. There are a lot of jokes, and they hit more than they miss. The hits often offer scathing-but-loving commentary on how LGBT+ people have been portrayed in media over the years. The misses generally feel like shoehorned-in one-liners from a stand-up routine. But I legitimately laughed out loud a few times throughout the movie, as did others in the small audience when I saw it.

The cast is great. Of course, Billy Eichner looms large over all, as I've already noted. The other half of the couple, Luke Macfarlane, has been great in a number of television roles, and is as likeable here. The bench of supporting cast members runs very deep, and there are a ton of fun cameos beyond that.

I'd give Bros a B. The die is sadly already cast on its theatrical run, but it's worth checking out in some venue, at some point.