Bros (15)

Award-winning podcaster Bobby Lieber wears his single status like a badge of honour and devotes more time to his career than personal connections. As such, he's looking forward to a new role as curator of the first National LGBTQ+ History Museum, which is being opened in Manhattan. During a night out with good friend Henry, Bobby locks eyes with handsome jock Aaron Shepard, whose masculine energy is intimidating. Regardless, Bobby and Aaron begin to date.

LondonNet Film Review

Bros (15) Film Review from LondonNet

Billed as the first gay romantic comedy released by a major Hollywood studio with a predominantly LGBTQ+ cast, 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, who co-wrote the script with director Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall). Audiences from across the Kinsey scale, which measures degrees of sexual orientation, will appreciate the film’s deep irreverence to pop culture, heteronormativity and gay representation, including uproarious self-mockery from Debra Messing, best known as one half of Will & Grace and a fervent ally of the LGBTQ+ community…

Eichner snags the lion’s share of zinging lines, like when his angsty forty-something jealously compares his fraught journey of self-discovery to members of Gen-Z navigating their sexual identities: “It’s not fair. We had Aids, they had Glee!” Bros is delightfully self-aware and mines universally appealing humour from key talking points in gay culture – straight acting vs feminine, monogamy vs open relationship – without artificially sweetening or sanitising on-screen behaviour. Hook-up apps like Grindr lead to raunchy sexual encounters that deliver surprisingly big laughs and gay characters are frequently their own worst enemies when it comes to deliberating the many glorious facets of masculinity. Eichner and co-star Luke Macfarlane catalyse winning chemistry from their first lingering glance across a nightclub dancefloor.

Sardonic podcaster Bobby Lieber (Eichner) hosts The Eleventh Brick At Stonewall and is a proud recipient of a best cis male gay man award from his peers in New York. His children’s book Are You There God? It’s Martina Navratilova was a rare misstep and Bobby intends to build on his brand of “getting angry about things” as curator of the first National LGBTQ+ History Museum in America, which requires an investment of five million dollars to open. Bobby wears his single status like a badge of honour to the chagrin of a close circle of friends that includes married couple Tina (Monica Raymund) and Edgar (Guillermo Diaz).

During the launch party of a new gay dating app called Zellweger, where men chat about their favourite actresses before they hook up, Bobby locks eyes with handsome jock Aaron Shepard (Macfarlane), whose masculine energy is intimidating. Despite obvious differences, the two men awkwardly navigate a no-strings relationship that is complicated when Aaron’s soon-to-be-married high school crush (Ryan Faucett) unexpectedly breaks off his engagement and comes out of the closet.

Bros is an effervescent and effortlessly charming treat that wears its heart on its sleeve next to a rainbow pride enamel pin. The first hour is noticeably funnier and spikier before Stoller starts laying the groundwork for a grand romantic gesture that unabashedly plucks heartstrings and has tears visibly welling in Macfarlane’s eyes. Old-fashioned, hopeful romantics will follow his lead. Boys do cry.

– Sarah Lee