Film review: Bros is probably the best romcom you’ll see all year

Bros is written by Eichner and Nicholas Stoller.

★★★★☆

It's not inevitable that the chap is the emotionally unavailable one in Hollywood romcoms, but that’s certainly the case in Bros (16s), a boy-meets-boy yarn in which New Yorkers Bobby (Billy Eichner) and Aaron (Luke Macfarlane) are both reluctant to commit to the idea of a relationship.

“Let’s be emotionally unavailable together,” suggests Billy, which sounds like a recipe for a disaster, and is: Billy is a Streisand-loving curator of a queer history museum, while Aaron is a ‘bro’, i.e., an impossibly handsome and buffed sports jock who adores Garth Brooks. Can Bobby and Billy work it out?

Written by Eichner and Nicholas Stoller, with the latter directing, Bros is probably the best romcom you’ll see all year.

The script has fun with some LGBTQ stereotypes and doubles down on others as it ceaselessly seeks to undermine preconceived notions of what a gay relationship — or, for that matter, a gay man — might be. There are camp elements to Eichner’s performance, certainly, with Billy a perpetually angry and intense character who communicates largely via sarcasm, while Bobby, when we first meet him, is a sleepy-eyed hunk whose intellectual interests start and stop with ice hockey.

There are camp elements to Eichner’s performance in Bros.

As the script starts to peel away their layers, however, we gradually discover that these apparent stereotypes are deeply rooted in their personalities, and specifically in their experience of growing up gay.

The leads have a terrific chemistry, both emotionally and in terms of their comic timing, and they’re surrounded by a strong supporting cast that includes Dot-Marie Jones, Eve Lindley and Jim Rash, and which also features a terrific cameo from Debra Messing playing herself.

The result is a laugh-out-loud comedy that feels fresh and uninhibited, and which might just rejuvenate the romcom genre.

(cinema release)