"BROS."--MOVIE THEATRE REVIEW

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Let me start off by saying see it! Luckily I am--it seems--incapable of walking out of a movie no matter how bad it is! Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane have been everywhere advertising "Bros." as a picture that will change the world but that's not the case! I don't know how long it took to get to the location of the film moved to Provincetown--seemed like hours--but I wanted to leave until that point and then the movie seemed to make a complete turnaround and took me over.. We are all used to Hollywood films where boy meets girl--boy and girl fall in love--boy and girl have a fight--eventually boy and girl get back together and live happily ever after. This movie follows the formula only it is boy meets boy and you know how it is going to end, here it is with a slight twist. The screenwriters Billy Eichner and Nicholas Stoller get a little preachy now and then and the comedy in this romance comedy isn't that funny but it is a sweet love story along the lines of "You've Got Mail" or "Pretty Woman" or any other Hollywood romance movie except here it is a gay love story and gay people will shout 'stereotypes' (not true) and be disappointed in the sex scenes while gay friendly non-gay people will sit back, enjoy and, just might, learn something about their friends, family members and next door neighbors. Bobby (Billy Eichner) is a fully out guy who has a thing for gay history and will be curator of a new LBGTQ+ history museum while Aaron( Luke Macfarlane) is a lawyer who organizes wills and estates and out to a certain extent but not at his job or with his family. With misunderstandings they flirt with each other but both are not into relationships for different reasons. Okay, you can take it from there except a few diversions you may not be ready for or expect. It probably won't surprise you that the soundtrack has been arranged by Marc Shaiman who was responsible for the music in "Sleepless in Seattle", "When Harry Met Sally", "Beaches" and other award winners. There are many surprise cameos by famous people of all shades of the rainbow and those who are their friends while a couple have major roles. I will admit I had many tears flowing in the last quarter of the movie but I am a crier in the movies. I identified with three characters in the film so that may be the tears but then again I cried in the aforementioned films! While Eichner seems to want this to be a landmark in Hollywood---and I do hope it does great at the box office--it just misses the mark though I hope it will bring more true to life gay romantic comedies. An aside: I am currently reading Harvey Fierstein's memoir "I Was Better Last Night" and he talks about how he set his award winning "Torch Song Trilogy" pre-AIDS and he was attacked by many gays for that and though "Bros." makes a passing reference to AIDS at the museum, with all the different people represented I don't recall any living on PREP seen, talked about or mentioned, even in passing.