Bros review: Billy Eichner’s gay rom com is history, but also hilarious

Much of the making-of history has been rocked in the marketing onslaught leading up to the premiere of Brothers, a new film written and starring Billy Eichner. It was touted as “the first gay romantic comedy by a major studio to feature a fully LGBTQ main cast” and Eichner as “the first open his gay man to write and star in a major studio film”. I’m here. The bizarrely selfish campaign is sort of a teaser of the topic of importance that usually accompanies bounty hunter fame dramas, and this time around two guys in love, another studio rom. It seems to undermine the simple revolutionary act of creating com.

But when you sit down and watch the film, it’s clear that this tension between the significant and the conventional is the film’s defining conflict. Brothers It’s a lovely Nora Ephron-inspired glamorous watch buried somewhere under the self-imposed burden of representing “a bizarre love story spanning 5,000 years.” A central romance with an attempt (but noble) to make.

The plot is about Bobby Leiber (Eichner), a queer podcaster and curator of New York City’s first LGBTQ history museum. Bobby is smug and proudly single when he meets Aaron (Hallmark movie mainstay Luke McFarlane), a macho real estate attorney who is as emotionally impenetrable as he is a total dreamboat. , his defense melts away. Add in King Cole’s copious needle drops and you’d think this was gay. When Harry met Sally It will run off.However Brothers I have many other things in mind.

These “5,000 Years of Queer Love Stories” have been referenced from the beginning, and the B-plot about the opening of Bobby’s Museum is initially a sly way of turning this mainstream studio comedy into a lesson in backdoor queer history. I feel like That’s all well and good, but while Eichner deserves credit for holding space for stranger stories outside of his own Sith White experiences, the execution here is mostly perfunctory. His museum colleagues are nothing more than the LGBTQ United Nations with crypto, trans, lesbian, non-binary and bisexual representation. The moments when they sit around a conference table and enthusiastically endorse queer topics are dry and evocative, as if the Senate sequence in the Star Wars prequel took place in an echo chamber of gay stereotypes. I feel that I have not received

After all, Eichner only has two hours. BrothersScripts are often drawn to create his character’s mouthpiece for whatever issues he feels need to be addressed, even at his own expense. Nonetheless, Bobby doesn’t look like a real person, but more like a Twitter rant about all the bad things about gay culture. This includes but is not limited to: Heterosexuals playing homosexuals. Comical use of “F slur”. Queer that the film industry is capitalizing on his trauma.and problematic properties bohemian rhapsody It’s about gay icons in straight relationships. All that is frustrating, but it’s made all the more frustrating by the fact that it takes up so much space in a movie that should be the antidote to those problems.

Eichner’s best when his frenzy was fanned by more organic means. It’s about pushing aside hordes of clubgoers (“They don’t stop VOGUEING!”), and when Aaron’s mother, an elementary school teacher, says he’s too young to learn in second grade, his last words are: It can mean realizing the things you can’t say. Weird history.He’s also, after all, a pretty sweet romantic lead with a nice singing voice, even if that means (like some kind of complicated subversion). Lin-Manuel’s “Love is Love, Love is Love” Speechon how “love isn’t really love”) remains ambiguous at best.

But the film belongs to Luke McFarlane and is one of the most unexpectedly poignant performances of the year. It’s one of the perfect synthesis of actors and roles, and a massive career breakout that’s exciting to celebrate. It really plays into the pathos of this man who has lived astride the privilege of being a straight-ahead masculine gay man with a desire not to feel like a jerk. He’s the most complete and compelling character in the cast, and his losses and triumphs are some of the best movies when he’s playing classic his rom-com beats from a gay perspective. Emotional height.

Image: Universal Pictures

As Bobby and Aaron share the screen, falling in love and falling in love in the changing seasons of New York City, Brothers The sex scenes are hot, candid, refreshingly playful, and (in one instance, thanks to the participation of an avid intruder named Steve) extremely funny. , overall, the film lacks the consistently laugh-out-loud high points of director Nicholas Stoller’s previous work. forget sarah marshallhis unerring desire to capture the most thoughtful version of his character, despite its flaws, yields an experience that will put a smile on your face.

Despite my frustration and nagging, Eichner sticks the landing with a finale as awkward and romantic as Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan’s New Year’s Eve reconciliation. That it does so feels like the first time the film’s disjointed threads and dangling participles have congealed into a cohesive whole. to Luke Skywalker, revealing Eichner’s ultimate framing of the film as the long-awaited introduction from queer culture to mainstream cinema.

In that context, it’s hard to blame Eichner for handling this “first major studio gay rom-com” with the utmost responsibility.in the meantime Brothers Not a really good rom-com with gay people, but a thesis about why gay people deserve to be in a rom-com, it feels like it’s perfectly aligned with the main goal of Bobby’s Slash Billy. I wanted to write about my world, my life, my friends. ”

After all, movies can’t really be everything for everyone, even if Billy can understand trying. This is the first time there is. As Bobby said at the museum’s opening, “It’s like we’re just getting to know each other.” Brothers It was a worthwhile intro. Let’s move on to the next step.

Brothers It hits theaters on September 30th.