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JUSTIN TANNER REVIEWS BROS
Billy Eichner’s (”Parks and Recreation”) densely hirsute and intriguingly concave chest gets a prominent closeup during an awkwardly edited post-sex pillow talk scene in director Nicholas Stoller’s (”Forgetting Sarah Marshall”) “gay-themed” romantic comedy “Bros.” And it’s the only moment in the entire film that feels even remotely human. For the rest of its (way too long) 115-minute running time, “Bros” alternates between long bouts of de trop shouting and arduous slogs of over-earnest rainbow-flag-waving. There might be an enjoyable movie underneath all the enervating disorder, but it’s pretty much impossible to see.
This tiny interaction, where Bobby (Eichner) and his new boyfriend Aaron (Luke McFarlane) lie in bed and discuss Bobby’s chest — Aaron describes it as looking “like a birdbath” — is so out of sync with the face-punching hyperactivity and aggressive hard sell of the rest of the film, it feels as if we’ve entered a new reality. For thirty seconds we can calmly see what “Bros” might’ve been had the entire production not been shot with a tanker truck full of epinephrine. The film is being sold as a Rom/Com but there is no Com to be found. And though the script has its share of ostensibly funny lines, the actors have been directed to lean so hard into the ‘jokes’ they end up alchemically transmuting the film into a Dada-esque landscape of anti-humor. Not helping matters is the charmless black hole of Billy Eichner, who cavalierly sucks all the light off the screen every time he opens his mouth. Randomly switch-hitting from a grab bag of repellent acting choices: shrill, mawkish, caustic, irritating and smarmy — apparently meant to represent his gay-specific neuroses — Eichner proves that simply being the star of a movie doesn’t mean you’re a movie star. McFarlane does better in his laughably underwritten part of a Lawyer who dreams of being a chocolatier (no kidding). But even Daniel Day Lewis couldn’t make this role (or the relationship) believable: Bobby and Aaron are not people — they are constructs. Like the generic food packaging in Alex Cox’s “Repo Man” (1984), they should just wear white t-shirts with blue lettering that read “gay-body-builder” and “gay-irritant.”
In fact every ‘character’ in the film is nothing more than a representation of a generic POV. The bi-sexual, the butch lesbian, the trans-woman, the mother of a gay guy, etc. The creators decided to avoid anything specific or personal by opening the largest possible umbrella and giving us the most painfully basic pre-school primer on the difference between the letters in the LGBTQ acronym. Like a PBS cartoon for children of inclusive parents. The problem with this approach is that it’s nearly impossible to care about anything that happens because no one resembles an identifiable human being. And with the actors being pushed into grotesque caricatures — even the reliable Debra Messing can’t play herself convincingly — there is nothing to hold onto. It is an utterly disposable movie.
I saw “Bros” on a date night with my husband at The Alamo Drafthouse in DTLA. And while I was cringing so hard I had an out of body experience, my husband had a very different reaction. He recognized “Bros” as a failure, but was nonetheless emotionally affected by the level of commitment, earnestness and dedication of the people involved: Here was a major studio and a bunch of well meaning artisans all attempting to make a blockbuster gay movie in 2022 that could be at once entertaining and meaningful to everyone. And the heartbreak of how woefully misbegotten this attempt by intelligent people to meet that admirable goal actually brought him to tears. Not me. IN THEATERS A few years ago, I decided to only watch gay cinema for a few months in an attempt to unseat the heteronormative images of ‘love’ that I’d been raised on; to make the sight of two men kissing the norm and see if that affected my sense of self. And boy, did it. And though I can’t in good conscience send anyone out to see “Bros”, I can use this opportunity to recommend a few gay movies I actually do love. And Then We Danced (2019) - Levan Akin - Georgia
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