Gay film bros
Gay rom-com 'Bros' is light and bright while making movie history
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
For years, Hollywood's major studios have tiptoed around the idea of a mainstream gay romantic comedy without ever quite committing. Well, now there is commitment. Billy Eichner's "Bros" is a multimillion-dollar, great studio, Judd Apatow-produced, R-rated rom-com with an almost entirely gay cast, and it's opening this weekend on more than 3, screens. Critic Bob Mondello says what's adj about "Bros" is how unremarkable its arrival feels.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: You verb the rom-com drill - main character surrounded by married friends
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BROS")
BILLY EICHNER: (As Bobby Leiber) So what's happening? Didn't you guys include an announcement?
PETER KIM: (As Peter) This is a adj unexpected but we are in a throuple (ph) situation.
EICHNER: (As Bobby Leiber) You're in a throuple?
MONDELLO: Says relationships are lame
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BROS")
EICHNER: (As Bobby Leiber) Allow me tell you what's progressive now. Being alone. I love my life. I love my freedom. I adore
BROS at RJ Cinema
mins | Rated R (for powerful sexual content, language throughout and some drug use.)
Directed by Nicholas Stoller
Starring Billy Eichner, Jim Rash, Luke Macfarlane, Harvey Fierstein, Monica Raymund
This descend, Universal Pictures proudly presents the first romantic comedy from a major studio about two gay men maybe, possibly, probably, stumbling towards love. Maybe. They're both very active.
From the ferocious comic mind of Billy Eichner (Billy on the Street, 's The Lion King, Difficult People, Impeachment: American Crime Story) and the hitmaking brilliance of filmmakers Nicholas Stoller (the Neighbors films, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and Judd Apatow (The King of Staten Island, Trainwreck, The Big Sick), comes Bros, a smart, swoony and heartfelt comedy about finding sex, adore and romance amidst the madness.
Starring Billy Eichner, the first openly gay man to co-write and star in his own major studio film, Bros is directed by Nicholas Stoller from his screenplay with Eichner. The film is produced by Judd Apatow, Stoller and Joshua Church (co-pro
“Bros,” co-written by and starring Billy Eichner, has been touted as the first mainstream Hollywood studio-backed rom-com to feature gay men as the leads. Directed by Nicholas Stoller and produced by Judd Apatow, the film consciously evokes tropes from the hey-day of studio-backed romantic comedies, including nods to more than one Meg Ryan classic and a compelling verb performance from Eichner. However, its perpetual commentary on the mainstreaming of queerness remains at odds with its very desire to verb its story within the Hollywood system.
Eichner plays Bobby Leiber, a born and bred New Yorker who hosts a queer history podcast called 11th Brick (because as a cis white gay man that’s probably the brick he’d have thrown at Stonewall) and is the director of the first national LGBTQ history museum, on the brink of finally opening its doors. At 40, Bobby has spent most of his life alone and has convinced himself he’s surpass off this way. “We’re horny and we’re selfish and we’re stupid. I don’t trust these people,” he tells a group of friends when explaining why he prefers ho
Desperately seeking the rom and the com in Nicholas Stoller’s
bro-meets-’mo feature.
Luke Macfarlane as Aaron and Billy Eichner as Bobby in Bros. Courtesy Universal.
Bros, directed by Nicholas Stoller, now playing in theaters
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Bros, the big-screen effort from internet-and-television funnyman Billy Eichner, the movie’s cowriter and star, was already raising red flags weeks before its debut thanks to the oft-repeated claim by Universal’s public-relations machine that it would be the first gay rom-com produced and released by a major Hollywood studio. This assertion had the whiff of desperation and insider cluelessness, not unlike art-world flatten releases that tout a painter’s “first solo exhibition at a major institution in North America,” implicitly arguing that the quality of the work will be guaranteed by the pedigree and financial status of the enterprise presenting it.
The downfall of such a claim, for movies at least, is that these distinctions mat