Bros, review: Hollywood’s first gay romcom should feel fresh – but this stinks

Billy Eichner’s film is too hung-up on its own significance to remember to be sweet, charming – or even funny

We deserve a gay romcom better than Bros – less preachy, more sincerely warm-hearted, and preferably one not starring Billy Eichner, who starts blowing it the instant he appears. He co-wrote, too, with his director, Nicholas Stoller, and in a presumed nod to Stephen Sondheim’s Company, plays Bobby, a successful podcast host in New York who’s perpetually single, and mostly likes it that way.

Why wouldn’t you, if the sound of your own voice was this fulfilling? Eichner’s alter ego grabs the mic whenever there’s one to hand, hogging the stage at gala functions where Bobby’s an Extremely Important Gay, telling us what a fab singer he is to cue up the vain finale, and explaining the whole predicament of being a cis, white gay man with low self-esteem in the modern world, while also insisting he’s one of the few out there who is truly, exceptionally clever. 

The film rarely resists a chance to impugn other swathes of gay culture as essentially moronic, rolling its eyes from a pedestal of urbane sophistication which Eichner sets about pushing everyone else off.

There barely looks to be room up there for Aaron (Luke Macfarlane), an appealingly chilled, non-neurotic, fitness-obsessed hunk Bobby meets at a launch party and quickly starts talking to death. Bobby’s dating rituals amount to taking the other person hostage, barely giving them slack. Aaron thinks about nipping it in the bud quite early – run, Aaron, run! – but surprises himself, and baffles us, by testing out a longer attachment.