Bros review: Ticks all the boxes but fails to launch

One doesn’t wish to be too cynical, but our sympathy goes out to Billy Eichner in his efforts to fashion a gay take on the sort of mainstream, neatly designed, bubbly romantic comedy that… well, nobody much pays to see any more.

Less well-known on this side of the Atlantic – his comedy gameshow Billy on the Street is a hit at home – Eichner has taken on Judd Apatow as a producer, but Bros works to a pattern familiar for decades before that multi-hyphenates rise. The protagonist meets an apparently unsuitable new partner. They eventually overcome difficulties. They fall out in the middle of the last act. One or the other then realises that a metaphorical race to the airport is required. If Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson couldn’t make that a hit in the perfectly lovely Marry Me, what hope has Eichner and his team?

Eichner, who wrote the Bros screenplay with director Nicholas Stoller, can’t be faulted for effort. He plays Bobby Lieber, a podcast host in New York City who feels no shame at resisting long-term attachments into his 40s. Life looks up as he becomes chief driving force in what the film claims is the first museum of LGBT+ history. When not squabbling with his committee, he falls in with a buff, gym-friendly dude called Aaron (suave Luke Macfarlane).

We’ve seen something like this dynamic in a dozen Woody Allen movies. Bobby is the neurotic schlemiel. Aaron is the smoother, less fraught character. The relationship is spiced up further by complications singular to gay communities: Bobby wonders if Aaron is a little too vanilla; Aaron finds Bobby’s status in the LGBT aristocracy unnerving.

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Bros is to be commended for sticking reasonably close to the familiar templates while compromising little in its representation of contemporary gay life. At times it does seem to be offering a sunny travelogue – we get a trip to Provincetown, Massachusetts for Pride; celebrity cameos lean into the obvious – but the picture is bracingly relaxed in its sex scenes (the average straight romcom does not end up with the 16 certificate handed out to Bros).

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For all that, Eichner’s film still feels stranded between indie sensibilities and those of the studio crowd-pleaser. The two lead actors are strong. The conversations around the museum amusingly tease out tensions between factions in the LGBT community. But Bros fails to satisfactorily map out its own space. Passes the time well enough. Doesn’t quite pull down the barriers.