‘Bros’ Review: Boy Meets Boy Meets Multiplex

Eichner’s onscreen avatar, Bobby Leiber, is a strident variation on his persona: a podcast host who dominates conversations as if he’s the one one with a mic. Bobby blames being single on a litany of common laments that dovetail with queer-specific gripes, say, guys on Grindr who kind, “Should see pic of ass,” forcing him to fetch a hoop mild and razor.

At a promo social gathering for a brand new app known as Zellweger (“For gays who need to discuss actresses and go to mattress,” his good friend, performed by Man Branum, describes), Bobby meets Aaron (Macfarlane) and dismisses the hunky lawyer as yet one more homosexual paradox: a person who’s each strappingly stable and emotionally vaporous. (Cleverly, the cinematographer Brandon Trost and the editor Daniel Gabbe assemble their first scenes collectively in order that Macfarlane seems to fade mid-conversation — literalized ghosting.) Neither man claims to imagine in affairs that last more than happily-ever-next-Thursday. As a substitute, Bobby and Aaron are competitively blasé, fumbling by a relationship that begins with a first-date foursome and hits its romantic climax with a textual content that reads, “What’s up.”

The dilemma of the movie isn’t will-they-or-won’t-they? Macfarlane, a seasoned lead of a dozen-plus straight Hallmark vacation romances together with “Sense, Sensibility and Snowmen” and “A Shoe Addict’s Christmas,” is expert at a Labradoresque eyebrow crinkle that might make anybody swoon. The suspense is available in watching Eichner wrestle to reconcile his galaxy-brained cynicism with mainstream rom-com touchstones: Nat King Cole on the soundtrack, a sidewalk dash impressed by “When Harry Met Sally …” and a contented ending even he simply would possibly imagine in, a little bit.

“Bros” is extra convincing when it when digs into Bobby’s bitterness. His drawback isn’t that the world refuses to assist queer love. It’s that at 40, he can’t deliver himself to tear down the partitions he constructed when it didn’t. Bobby is a battle-scarred veteran of Twentieth-century homophobia struggling Twenty first-century whiplash. Acceptance has moved quick — nearly too quick for Bobby, who sneers that the Hallheart Channel — a Hallmark lampoon — is pandering to sexual liberation with movies like “A Holly Poly Christmas.” On the similar time, Bobby’s buddies are celebrating main commitments: throuples, surrogate-delivered triplets, even a gender-reveal orgy, and his various collaborators on the board of an L.G.B.T.Q. historical past museum contemplate white cisgender males to be mothballed relics.

Nobody on the museum can agree on what reveals to position inside, a subplot that enables queer folks within the movie to overtly debate which tales it needs to inform about itself. Should it nonetheless prioritize wrestle over pleasure? Is there room for everybody’s standpoint? And the way can in the present day’s storytellers honor folks from the previous whose passions could have been suppressed or erased? As a partial reply to those questions, the board creates a Corridor of Bisexuals the place Amy Schumer and Kenan Thompson play goofy, grinning holograms of Eleanor Roosevelt and James Baldwin. Let students argue in regards to the show’s accuracy. It accomplishes what “Bros,” like each different rom-com, goals to do: attraction audiences with a spirited, corny facsimile of life.

Bros
Rated R for intercourse, swearing and a fast snort of poppers. Working time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters.