The saddest development of the last 10 years is watching studio comedies slowly fall by the wayside. One of the reasons I got into movie reviewing was because I tried to recapture those fun moments in a theater with my best friends anticipating the start of Superbad, or Tropic Thunder, or Bridesmaids, and the sheer joy of a collective audience watching something that was going to enter the quotefest in a friend group, forever. Will Bros reawakens the studio comedy, I don’t know. However, it’s got 2 things going for it: 1) it continues in Love, Simon‘s footsteps of major Hollywood studios backing LGBTQ stories for big audiences, opening a door to storytelling most people haven’t seen, and 2) it’s just straight up f*ckin funny. You’ll laugh your ass off.
Bobby Lieber (Billy Eichner) is a big time podcaster in New York City, and just got promoted to curate the first LGBTQ museum in the world. While Bobby buries himself in his work, his friends have all started surrogating children or thrupling (3 people dating each other). Grindr and other apps have made Bobby romantically detached, content for short hookups or clubbing with his friend Henry (Guy Branum). One night at a gay club, Bobby starts talking to Aaron (Luke Macfarlane), a very ripped bro-y gay man that Bobby becomes enamored with. After some “laissez-faire” texting, Bobby and Aaron agree to a few “not a date” hang outs, as they both continue their very LGBTQ courtship while slowly developing real feelings for one another.
The behind the scenes comedy star power on Bros is off the charts. Judd Apatow produced it, and basically produced every funny movie from 2003 until today. Nicholas Stoller, the Forgetting Sarah Marshall/Neighbors guy, directed and helped Billy Eicher write it. Eichner himself, though not a superstar, has been comedically tormenting passers by on the streets and in the Pawnee parks department for years. So when these 3 found each other, they were ready to helm this movie. And that wealth of comedy knowledge is all onscreen. Not 5 minutes go by that Bros will have you laughing with 10 years of repressed studio comedy glee. Plus, the world gets insights into LGBTQ culture maybe they’ve never seen before: Bobby and Aaron’s first “hook up” is about as funny of a situation you can end up in while trying to have a makeout session. Watching Bobby argue with the other museum curators about the L’s, G’s, B’s, T’s, or Q’s issues felt like a backdoor pilot to a funny new TV show. Plus, it turns out LGBTQ sex can be just as hilarious as straight people sex. Plus, Stoller and Apatow draw from comedy history and their Hollywood clout, delivering a bunch of GREAT cameos, and finding incredible comic runners like the evisceration of Hallmark’s “inclusive” Christmas programming with some really great quotes that will be said for years to come, as only a great studio comedy can pull off.
Comedy was never going to be Bros’s issue though. Being an Apatow movie, the big concern was if Billy Eichner could be a romantic leading man. Because while the plot of Bros is a laugh ’em up, the story is about Bobby Lieber learning to take down the decades of walls he’s built up to connect with someone he has feelings for, Aaron. I’m delighted to report that Eicher really took lessons from all the romcoms he grew up loving. When it comes time to really get dramatic, Eichner gives some of the best acting performances I’ve ever seen him give here, downplaying the comedy to find the right notes each scene demands. Hallmark hunk Luke Macfarlane has the opposite worries as Eichner. He’s at home in the drama, but he proves a decent and quick study on the comedy side as well (he’s got a funny texting face). The pair together are that perfect romcom concoction of prickly but intoxicating chemistry that makes the audience want them to end up together. And filling out Bros cast is a cavalcade of some of the funniest people in showbusiness today, all LGBTQ, including overdue showcases for Dot-Marie Jones, Miss Lawrence, Eve Lindley, TS Madison, Guy Branum, and Brock Ciarelli (in the movie’s funniest scene).
Comedies are at their best when challenging the established social norms. For the past 60 years, studio comedies have been squarely looking through the white male lens of what is funny. Bros, along with Bridesmaids and Girls Trip, shows us some new, humorous ways to see the world from a different point of view. Hopefully we see the resurrection of studio comedies through this enhanced perspective, which can challenge the current societal hierarchy with a wiseass remark. Or in Bobby Lieber’s case, an eyerolling textchain.