Bros review – ribald and riotous gay romcom

Bobby (Billy Eichner), a would-be museum curator and a blogger whose acidulated witticisms have brought him a degree of fame within New York’s LGBTQ+ community, is not interested in romance. Neither is Aaron (Luke Macfarlane), a miserable testate lawyer by day, shirtless queer-club eye candy by night. And certainly neither would countenance anything as soul-crushingly cosy and heteronormative as commitment. And yet, following an abortive first encounter, there’s a spark between them.

This sharply written comedy attempts to take the multiplicity of LGBTQ+ identities and the many shapes and forms of queer relationships and retool them to fit into a mainstream romcom template. And for the most part, it works rather well – a ribald and riotous onslaught of bracing humour which belies a sweetly soft centre. But it’s when that softness turns into sappiness in the third act that the problems start. Eichner is on fine form with the scabrous spikiness of the first half of the picture, but neither he nor the film itself seems fully comfortable with the final descent into sentimentality.