My Review of Bros (2022)

Written by Billy Eichner And Nicholas Stopper

Directed by Nicholas Stoller

Aaron (to Bobby): "Hey! If you don't trust me, that's fine. But if for some reason, underneath all that strength and confidence, you still don't trust that you are lovable enough, I'm living proof... .that you're wrong."

I've been putting this one off for a long time and I was going to leave it until next month but boredom got the better of me. There's a reason I left this one so long and it's the lead actor.

I don't dislike Billy Eichner as an actor but he's quite abrasive at times and for a romcom, I did question whether he was the right choice to lead one. Watching this movie still didn't give me a definitive answer by the way. The box office numbers would suggest no by the way but are they always a good indicator?

Like all romcoms, everyone's well off or affluent enough to afford decent apartments. With Eichner's character, he's playing an opinionated LGBT podcaster named Bobby Lieber. Bobby's not into relationships and had a dim view on certain type of men.

There's Aaron Shepard (Luke Macfarlane). He's the more masc for masc kind of gay man that made Bobby self conscious and Aaron's in a lawyer job that's not satisfying him creatively. Bobby and Aaron try the casual relationship for some of the movie but it got serious rather fast and their differences ended up causing some problems for them.

There's such a thing as being too forthright and Bobby being that was vexing for Aaron when the latter's parents came to town. That led to a temporary split between the two of them. Of course this being a romcom, both men learned from each other before inevitably reuniting with each other.

Aaron learned to loosen up a bit and go into the actual line of work he wanted to do while Bobby embraced a genre of music that normally wasn't to his taste. The reunion was sweet and I'll admit after a shaky start, there's some genuinely solid chemistry between Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane. 

- While she's certainly not popular these days, I did find Debra Messing rather funny being exasperated by gay men mistaking her for her most iconic character.

- There's some great supporting roles from LGBT actors such as Dot Marie Jones, Guillermo Diaz, Harvey Fierstein, Amanda Bearse, Jai Rodriguez and TS Madison to name a few.

- Aaron wasn't lying when he said that The Hangover was his favourite movie. I like it when people admit something very mainstream is their favourite rather than their Letterboxd favourite.

- There's cameos from the likes of Seth Meyers, Ben Stiller, Amy Schemer, Kristin Chenowith and Kenan Thompson. Some of them played some very famous LGBT people.

- Standout music: Nat King Cole's Love Is Here To Stay, Orville Peck's Turn To Hate and Billy Eichner's Love Is Not Love.

- Chronology: Took place over several months, included Christmas and then three months later in New York.

I think I seriously misjudged Bros (2022) as a movie. I ended up liking it a lot more than I thought I would and while I'm not sure Billy Eichner is a leading man for this genre, I'll admit there's good chemistry between him and Luke Macfarlane.

Rating: 7 out of 10