Funny, but not fun.
Few films feel quite so anxious about their own existence as Bros. Not in the apologetic, closet-adjacent way queer cinema once had to contort itself into, but in the try-hard, elbow-in-the-ribs manner of someone desperate to prove they belong at the party – while loudly narrating every move they make. It’s a romcom that knows exactly what a romcom looks like, sounds like, and is meant to mean – but also seems terrified that, by playing it too straight (in the structural sense), it’ll get accused of assimilation. So it laces every beat with a self-aware preamble and an exit strategy.
Bros arrives trailing historic headlines and box office handwringing, the first major studio-backed gay romantic comedy with a wide release and an all-LGBTQ+ principal cast. That’s a meaningful moment, of course, but Bros doesn’t just carry that flag – it waves it at the audience from the opening scene. Bobby (Billy Eichner), our motor-mouthed podcasting protagonist, is introduced explaining the commodification of queer identity to a room of approving nods, just in case we’d forgotten what Thinkpiece Twitter looked like in 2018. The film wears its politics on its sleeve, but in doing so, seems to forget to roll those sleeves up and do any lifting in the story department.
Eichner, co-writer and star, brings his signature high-strung misanthropy to the role, repurposed here as a brittle defence mechanism that keeps romance at bay until, inevitably, it doesn’t. His chemistry with Luke Macfarlane’s Aaron – the square-jawed, masc-for-masc foil with a soft-centred protein shake of a personality – gives the film its most compelling tension: not whether they’ll get together, but whether either of them will stop performing long enough to let something real in. Their courtship plays out like a YouTube reaction channel watching a Nora Ephron playlist on 1.5x speed.
Macfarlane, a Hallmark veteran who’s spent more screen time than most pretending to fall for women in the final ten minutes of Christmas movies, brings something quietly charming to the role. He’s giving Cary Grant at circuit parties. Eichner, meanwhile, never quite manages to modulate his volume enough for sincerity to land unforced. That’s partly the script’s fault. Every moment of vulnerability is defused by a punchline, and not always a good one. The film acts as if it’s allergic to emotional silence, preferring to talk over its own heart.
What’s fascinating – and frustrating – about Bros is how much of its raunchy, R-rated persona feels like posturing. The sex scenes are frank, sure, but they’re also meticulously antiseptic, as if directed by someone who’s studied queer intimacy through HBO prestige drama and emoji-laden group chats. The nudity is there, but so carefully curated it feels less like a commitment to authenticity and more like a peep show run by HR. The film wants to be both the antidote to heteronormative romcom tropes and a textbook example of them. Which, to be fair, is a more accurate depiction of gay dating than most films manage – but dramatically, it’s a little confused.
There is something smart in how the film uses Bobby’s hard to like, combative persona to mirror the compromises of mainstream queer representation. He critiques the sanitised museum of LGBTQ+ heroes he’s building, while becoming a sort of curator of his own narrative. But the film doesn’t interrogate this irony – just nods to it, winks, and scuttles on to the next set piece. Every confrontation becomes an audition, every monologue a defence mechanism. It’s queerness performed at volume, as if sincerity alone might not be legible enough.
Comedy-wise, Bros feels oddly caught between the knowing irreverence of The Other Two and the blunt-force zingers of late-period Will & Grace. There are great lines, but also an exhausting number of half-gags that fizzle under the weight of their own cleverness. The ensemble cast – genuinely queer and refreshingly diverse – is often reduced to token chorus duty, pinging one-liners off each other in scenes that feel like B-roll from a scripted reality show about queer co-working spaces. It’s fun, but rarely funny.
What Bros lacks, crucially, is the effortless sincerity that makes the best romcoms stick. Beneath the barbs and bed-hopping, the genre runs on the quiet terror of letting someone see you. Bros can’t quite bring itself to slow down long enough for that vulnerability to register. There’s a constant sense that it’s bracing for disapproval, offering up jokes as pre-emptive apologies. It forgets the audience might just want to feel something that hasn’t already been annotated.
Which is a shame, because the bones are here. The final act flirts with the kind of emotional payoff that could have cemented Bros as a genuine watershed moment rather than a well-meaning prototype. But the resolution arrives like a PowerPoint presentation on narrative catharsis – technically correct, but uninspired.
It’s not a failure, not really. Just a film so desperate to be seen and validated that it forgets how to be wanted. It wants to be When Harry Met Sally, but queerer and louder and more self-aware. What it delivers is a high-concept pitch for what a gay romcom should look like, tangled in its own anxiety about being taken seriously. Admirable in its ambition, occasionally arresting in its honesty, but too often content to skate the surface of its own breakthrough. If Bros teaches us anything, it’s that being first isn’t the same as being fearless – but it’s a start.
