Romantic comedies are one of cinema’s most popular genres for a reason.
In a world full of banality and ho-hum-dom, where reality can’t really compete with our once-vibrant expectations of late – if this all seems a little bleak, ennui can strike you even if you’ve had a perfectly lovely life – rom-coms offer up the possibility that in amongst all the busyness of the everyday, something extraordinary can happen.
Something so out of the blue and so different that it happily upsets our apple cart, thrusting us into a world where commuting and paying bills still rear their ugly heads but where somehow the birds are singing, sun is shining, every meal is candy and we are LOVED.
Delightful though that picture might be, and how much we all want it deep down, the truth is, as new gay rom-com Bros so wonderfully and thoughtfully shows, that we are all remain hostage to the very things that lock us into a particular way of life.
Sure, the curtain has been pulled back as it is when handsomely nerdy gay historian and viral LBGT+ podcaster Bobby Lieber (Billy Eichner) locks eyes across a crowded gay nightclub with hunky, sculpted muscle guy Aaron Shepard (Luke Macfarlane) and finds himself drawn to someone in ways he can’t explain – Aaron is definitely not his type and he is very much convinced of the fact that the opposite is true too – but seeing it open is one thing and wholeheartedly walking through the opening, or walking through it at all, is quite another.
It’s that “hope is calling but do I want to answer it ?” dynamic that powers the Nicholas Stoller directed, Billy Eichner and Stoller-penned film which gives us, at long last, our first big unabashedly traditional mainstream-released gay rom-com which, though it might try just a little too hard at times, trying to marry gay activism with good old romantic love, hits the spot when it comes to a much-needed dose of escapist gay romance.
Eicher and Macfarlane deliver up the perfect will-they-won’t-they possible couple, a study in contrasts which the film uses to drive its reasonably straight forward narrative – and yes, that word is used deliberately; despite Eichner maintaining gay love and relationship norms are different, Bros successfully cleaves to all the tropes and cliches of hetero rom-coms we all know and mostly love – where boy meet bro, boy wonders what the hell he is doing with bro and boy and bro, naturally because rom-coms always, or should always, arrive at the same sigh-inducing destination.
And honestly for all of Bobby’s likely justified protestations, and he doth protest a lot, his character defined by passion, intensity and an adorable need to bend the world to his point of view, that gay love is no straight love (true in many respects bar the fundamental truth that unconditional love is a joy no matter your sexuality), Bros stays close to the meet-cute/get-to-know-each-other/montage of relationship-building/misunderstanding and heartfelt reconciliation that give rom-coms their shape and flavour.
After their initial meet-cute across that dancefloor, where commitment-phobic Bobby, who’s working hard to set up New York’s new LGBT+ history museum with a passionate bunch of queer colleagues, is mystified at the way Aaron is bright and engaged before breaking off and disappearing, repeating, he feels, the flaky pattern of many gay interactions, evidenced with some wit and sense of satire by the Grindr hook-ups and messaging that punctuate the story.
As if proof positive that Bobby’s assertions that gay men aren’t capable of really committing, a belief that he projects onto Aaron a lot even if there’s also some truth there, these hook-ups are evidence, says Bobby that what he might want deep down simply isn’t possible.
It’s interesting that, for a man who is an avid student of gay history and who contends LGBT+ people have always been there, they’ve just been repeatedly edited out of or minimised in the historical record, that he’s unwilling to make the kind of loud and proud declaration that true love often demands.
Confident and forthright in many things, Bobby is reticent when it comes to love, but to be fair so is Aaron who makes it clear that while he has threesomes with other muscles studs with alacrity, that he doesn’t believe he’s a relationship guy.
Ah, the lies we well tell ourselves to cover up pain or internalised homophobia or pain; they sound like sound, rational talking points, and both men employ them with gusto at various points through Bros, but really, they are just a shield for the fact that what they both want is in their grasp but they are not entirely sure what to do with it were they to fully enter into it.
True love that is – what on earth did you think was meant by that sentence?
Anyway, Bros is mostly a heartwarming success, especially for those queer audience members like this reviewer who long to see their stories writ large on the big screen in a way that feels authentic and normal, because it deliver a happy, largely-by-the-numbers rom-com with freshness, originality and an avowedly gay lens.
It’s so determined to prove itself as a full-on gay rom-com that it often gets a little too preachy and passionately expositional for its own good, much like Bobby who, along with his team who are a gloriously diverse group of lesbian, trans and non-gender identifying people, often has dialogue sounding like a speech at a gay activist rally.
In one way it makes sense; finally, as Bobby observes again and again, the world has caught up and people have an obvious platform on which to demonstrate their talents and passions, and if you can be seen, then you should be heard too?
Sue you should, and the need to shout it super loud is understandable after so long in the silent shadows, but there are times when Bros, and Bobby god bless this adorably intense rainbow-striped cotton socks, sounds like a gay polemic than a person.
These shouty moments aside, Bros is, for the greater part, a joy, the sort of well-written, nicely-acted rom-com that makes love, and especially gay love, feel not just possible, but desperately necessary, no matter the fears that have to be surmounted to embrace, own and live in it, and delightfully truthful and real which, since the world is paying more attention to us than it used to, is great because maybe who queer people love and who they are will finally be authentically seen and understood, and swoon-worthy moments aside (especially in the musically cheesy but gorgeously uplifting finale), that can only be a good thing (you suspect Bobby would approve).