Film Review - Bros
Images courtesy of Universal Pictures Australia.
Genuinely funny and warm, Bros is lovingly sewn together by a wholly queer cast and crew for the very community it represents. So, it’s disappointing that fewer threads extend to the agonisingly unremarkable central romance.
Stacks of rom-coms have centred on the ‘work-obsessed’ and ‘love isn’t a priority’ leads, each resolving to find their magical exception. But Bros puts the stakes of the film itself - the first major queer rom-com - higher than chemistry, where most time is spent opening an LGBTQ+ History museum; questioning what it means to be queer, and our answerability to the community in 2022.
Bros sees the cynical gay podcast host, Bobby (Billy Eichner) sweat under his new role as curator of the LGBTQ+ museum, single and bereft of the love he’s made a career out of representing. When Bobby meets corporate jock, Aaron (Luke Mcfarlene) at a gay club, they are drawn together through their shared detachment from longstanding relationships.
At first disbelieving that superstud Aaron has any right to complain, Bobby soon realises they've each come up with opposing ideologies on queerness. Bobby is forever loyal to his gay identity: quick to cut ties with small minds and abandoning 'heteronormative' career dreams, while hyper-masc Aaron opts for mass appeal, staying closeted at a job he hates and with a family that may not accept him.
For much of the film, we revel in the company of the LGBTQ+ Museum boardroom, brainstorming exhibits and laughing alongside an endearingly familiar cast (Jim Rash, Dot-Marie Jones and Miss Lawrence). These scenes play out like gay twitter triumphs and squabbles, forming hysterical though fair vignettes of each perspective. Unsurprisingly, sparks fly when fellow queers are finally given the room together.
Aaron and Bobby are far less conductive as romantic leads. But in all fairness, there’s hardly room for rom-com in Billy Eichner’s meta-struggle with imposterism. As the writer and star of the landmark gay rom-com, Eichner writes much of himself in Bobby. From his unfiltered podcast persona with its intimate mostly-queer audience, he’s catapulted to head curator of queerdom past-and-present.
It's gruelling enough to represent queers to queers, much less win approval from the straight masses. How do you perfectly package the spectrum of queer experience? Bobby (or Eichner) is desperate to get it right. For most of the film, we’re stuck in his head trying to puzzle it out.
Where the romance is present, Eichner delves into dynamics unique to mlm intimacy. When Bobby catches Aaron injecting testosterone (for cosmetic purposes), he becomes insecure about his own dorkier brand of masculinity. Bobby resolves to source his own stock of T, hit the gym and cloak his 'gay voice’ to score a casual hookup.
For all the care taken to reflect its community, Bros assumes a shallow cisgender lens in it's discussion of masculinity. As a trans guy, my experience with Testosterone is obviously very different. For many transmascs, it's a safe and effective way to affirm gender identity. At best, Bros paints T as an identity cheat. Transphobic campaigns take advantage of the same misrepresentations: Testosterone is doping, corruptive, unnatural - the 'evil hormone'. With trans medical bans looming, trans people need to know that cis queers are in their corner. Had Bobby instead hooked up with a transman at the gym, his lesson in toxic masculinity would have held much greater meaning.
Aside from crowd cameos, transmen are invisible through the lens of cis gay men, as in reality. Bros did acknowledge transmen once though: Billy Eichner joked that trans guys were easily mistaken for butch lesbians.
In an earnest love note to the LGBTQIA+, Bros ushers in an ambitious standard for bigscreen queerdom with some grounded perspectives, sweetspot cultural references and an all queer cast and crew.
Bros is screening in cinemas from Thursday 27th October. For tickets and more info, click here.