Bros

 0/4

Starring: Billy Eichner, Luke Macfarlane

Rated R for Strong Sexual Content, Language Throughout and Some Drug Use

"Bros" is the first big budget gay romantic comedy co-written and directed by Nicholas Stoller and produced by frat comedy king Judd Apatow.  That certainly helps the ad campaign considering that it is no secret that it's a love story between two gay guys.

Funny, because this is a movie that will put gay men back in the closet to prevent guilt by association.

Calling the film a "romantic comedy" is a bit of a misnomer because it's really one small part of it.  The rest is a 100 minute screed about how the marginalization of the LGBTQ community and their personal hurts allow for behavior that would otherwise lack any sort of justification.  Anything, literally, anything goes as long as its under the auspices of activism for the LGBTQ.

Bobby (Eichner) is a single 40 year old gay man living in the Big Apple.  He fights off loneliness with anonymous sex and efforts to open up a LGBTQ history museum.  But one night clubbing with a friend, he spots the smoking hot Aaron (Macfarlane), a well-toned beefcake with a perfect bod.  Inexplicably, Aaron finds the dweeby Bobby hot, and they hit it off.  But the activist queen Bobby and the low-key Aaron are polar opposites, and it's going to take a miracle to keep them together.

There is a reason why Bobby is single.  Bobby is toxic.  He is one of the most singularly unpleasant, cynical, obnoxious assholes to grace the movie screen in many a moon.  That might be a compliment except that he's supposed to be the romantic lead.  There is a line between being self-deprecating and a Negative Nancy.  Bobby crosses that line after about two lines and never looks back.  Within minutes I was wishing Bobby would get flattened by a cement truck or set on fire.  He's that horrible.

What's worse is that Eichner and Stoller not only want us to like Bobby (which is impossible) but laud his behavior.  Bobby may have his heart in the right place in advocating for LGBT history, but insisting that Abraham Lincoln was gay because of some surviving and not at all noteworthy correspondence makes him look foolish.  Perhaps this was meant to be humorous but Bobby lacks self-awareness.  In fact, he's so blinded by his cause that he can't understand that he rubs people the wrong way.

His co-star's valiant efforts to create a likable guy are undermined by Bobby's preaching.  Bobby is constantly complaining of being victimized.  He has a long monologue about being shut out from jobs because of his feminine mannerisms or to tone down "gayness."  Horrible as that is, that isn't his problem. He is so angry and constantly playing the victim that it has become all he knows.  And he doesn't just want audiences to learn about the horrible experiences many LGBTQ people have, he wants them to feel his rage.  Case in point: when finding out that Aaron's mother is a second grade teacher, he ruthlessly interrogates her about why she doesn't teach LGBTQ history.  The scene is uncomfortable rather than funny because Bobby is too narcissistic to understand that this is not appropriate dinner conversation.  Especially when meeting your boyfriend's parents for the first time.

It's not that Bobby's views are wrong.  He is quite right.  But it is the job of the filmmakers to present them cinematically.  They do not.  Progressive rants have no place in a romantic comedy, and the film focuses on them so intensely that there is no room for humor or romance.  In fact, Bobby is so awful that for a while I thought that he was satirizing gay men.  Everyone else in the film plays their lines for humor, but Eichner does not.  He's playing by different rules than the rest of the cast, and that sinks the character and the film.

It's a pity that Bobby is so vile.  Luke Macfarlane is handsome and charming, and easily pokes fun at macho male culture (he's a CrossFit devotee).  The rest of the cast would fit into any Judd Apatow movie. And Debra Messing's cameo is laugh aloud funny.  The film also addresses questions such as monogamy and polyamory in refreshingly frank ways, but if Eichner wanted to laud them as he clearly does, mocking those who don't do those things isn't the way to go.  Bobby insults and berates anyone who isn't exactly like him.

Their efforts are all to waste though.  They are second to The Gospel of Billy Eichner.  This is basically a romantic fantasy for him: he can be as mean and combative as he wants, put his boyfriend second to his whims and ego, and Aaron will sit there and take it.  Bobby knows that he is a jerk, but that makes him all the more vile.  He believes that Aaron and everyone else should put up with it.  When they temporarily break up, as they must in a movie like this, Bobby gets mad when he catches Aaron with another guy (it's apparently doubly bad because the guy is an old friend of Aaron's who just came out of the closet).  I'm thinking, "Good for you, Aaron!  Get away from this loser."  Bobby is therefore exploiting other people's trauma to justify his toxicity.

It's rare that a character can be so godawful that it can sink a movie.  The only one that comets mind is "Ghost World," but compared to Bobby, Enid is a pillar of sunshine.  That movie at least tried to be different and do something substantial.  This is just the pits.