Bros is a new movie that puts two gay men front and centre for the first time in a romantic comedy. But aside from this monumental landmark, it’s also one of the first genuinely funny rom-coms I’ve seen in a long time.
Bros is the brainchild of American comedian and actor Billy Eichner (who stars as one of the main characters, Bobby) and director Nicholas Stoller, who is also responsible for familiar comedy movies, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him To The Greek and Bad Neighbours, to name a few.
But, despite those names being involved with Bros, I did have my reservations going into seeing it at the Sydney premiere. Now, I’m not going to call myself the biggest rom-com fan on the planet, but I have seen the majority of popular titles in recent years. And, while they do on occasion bring out a slight snicker laugh from me, I wouldn’t say they have me to a point where my sides are splitting from genuine creased up laughter.
But that’s exactly what Bros offered in spades.
The plot of Bros is a little conventional and at times, predictable. Bobby (Billy Eichner) is a 40-something gay man living in New York who has never found true love. But he does take pride in just hooking up with guys and being single. He says this way of living is “romantic,” and he’d take it over a divorced marriage or a heartbreaking break-up any day.
He is a strong advocate for gay rights, which he talks about at length on his podcast. Whilst talking on his podcast, the audience gets run through the typical life for a single gay man, which had the entire auditorium in hysterics, because of how accurate it is.
He also plans to open the first LGBTQ+ history museum in the city, with help from his friends and representatives of other minority groups. The conversations this group has at their meeting table is another source of the aforementioned lols.
Bobby goes to a club with his friend Henry, and there he spots Aaron (Luke Macfarlane), the stereotypical, physically attractive gay man who is “boring.” But, the two occasionally message each other, “Hey, what’s up” which is a running joke through the movie. For those unaware, this is the standard opening message gay men receive on the dating app, Grindr.
Bobby and Aaron begin to spend more time with each other and even sleep together (again, another hilarious scene that we imagine would have been incredible fun to shoot). But when Aaron’s family come to visit him, he asks Bobby to “be a bit less yourself,” to which Bobby takes offence. They do meet up shortly after, and Bobby runs Aaron through a whole speech which, to be honest, I felt did go on a little too long. It also, I felt, began to make Bobby a bit unlikeable.
I am all for equality and rights for everyone, and nobody should be victimised for living their own life. If it doesn’t affect me personally, then how could I possibly have a problem with whatever someone else does with their life? But Bobby shouted quite a lot when he was putting his point across, which I felt made him a little harder to want to listen to.
If you want someone to understand where you come from and perhaps change the way they think, then you also have to be likeable and engaging. The shouting just didn’t do it for me, and started to verge on cringeworthy. The content of the speech, I completely understood and it needed to be said. I just would have preferred if it was said in a more engaging way.
Overall, Bros is a landmark movie. Not only does it depict two men in a romantic comedy for the first time, but the majority of the rest of the cast identify as LGBTQ+ too, again, huge for Hollywood. I can only hope this evolution, not just for rom-coms, but for Hollywood as a whole, continues. It’s about damn time.
Bros will be released in Australian cinemas on 27th October, 2022. Until then, you can watch the official trailer below.
WATCH: Bros Official Movie Trailer