Bros movie review & film summary (2022)
Eichner performs Bobby Leiber, a born and bred New Yorker who hosts a queer historical past podcast known as eleventh Brick (as a result of as a cis white homosexual man that’s in all probability the brick he’d have thrown at Stonewall) and is the director of the primary nationwide LGBTQ historical past museum, on the point of lastly opening its doorways. At 40, Bobby has spent most of his life alone and has satisfied himself he’s higher off this fashion. “We’re sexy and we’re egocentric and we’re silly. I don’t belief these individuals,” he tells a gaggle of mates when explaining why he prefers hookups to something long run.
This being a self-aware rom-com, Bobby’s life and plans change when he meets Aaron (Luke Macfarlane) at a membership. Earlier than we all know it the 2 have determined to be emotionally unavailable collectively. What follows is a by-the-books romantic comedy crammed with dates and intercourse and fights and assembly the household, all with a queer twist. The soundtrack crammed with jazzy Nat King Cole songs helps evoke a Nora Ephron-style New York Autumn.
Working B-side to Bobby and Aaron’s love story are the preparations to open the museum. Right here we see Bobby’s (and presumably Eichner’s) ardour for queer historical past and neighborhood. The museum board is fabricated from quite a lot of queer individuals, together with a butch lesbian, a belligerent bisexual, a Black trans lady, and a nonbinary particular person. Sadly, every character comes throughout as a cliché, which is probably going by design as the entire movie makes use of queer identification as a springboard for jokes. Most of the jokes do land, as a result of if something queer individuals know how you can chortle at ourselves. Nonetheless, what Eichner and co-writer Stoller appear to have forgotten is {that a} rom-com like “When Harry Met Sally” is so iconic not simply due to Harry and Sally’s authenticity, however that each one of its characters really feel like actual individuals.
Whereas a lot of the characters are underdeveloped, Eichner’s razor-sharp wit and caustic humor shines by way of within the dialogue and situational comedy as he skewers many features of homosexual relationship tradition, from Grindr hookups to obsessive gymnasium utilization to group intercourse. The script is just not peppered with queer historical past and numerous name-drops of queer icons like Cher, Barbra Streisand, and Mariah Carey.
Eichner additionally takes jabs on the trendy commodification of queer tradition inside the leisure trade, from the “Queer Eye for the Straight Man” reboot to the common love of “Schitt’s Creek” to Hallmark’s inclusion of queer rom-coms (going as far as creating pretend titles like “Christmas with Both” and “A Holly Poly Christmas”) as soon as they realized a revenue may very well be made. Though Eichner rejects this very sanitization of queerness, the self-aware rom-com beats in “Bros” discover it treading the identical waters.
