Bros (Nicholas Stoller, 2022); Fire Island (Andrew Ahn, 2022)

Bros may be "the first romantic comedy from a major studio about two gay men maybe, possibly, probably stumbling towards love," to quote Universal Pictures' proud press release. But Universal never seemed to wonder who in 2022 cares about gay content coming from a major studio. TikTok and Onlyfans and the Big Streamers shove more gay content down our throats than we can swallow. So while I always want the best for the talented, screamingly camp co-writer and star of Bros Billy Eichner, I wasn't sad when his project failed to set the box office on fire. 

A bigger problem is the "possibly, probably stumbling towards love" part of the equation, i.e., wedging gay characters into the quintessentially heterosexual rom-com formula. As a child growing up in the 1970s and 1980s with a relative paucity of gay representation, I always wanted a genre film with characters who just happen to be gay, say, a Total Recall (Paul Verhoeven, 1990) where Arnold Schwarzenegger has the hots for Michael Ironside instead of Sharon Stone, no big whoop. Then I saw D.E.B.S. (Angels Robinson, 2004), a sort of lesbian Charlie's Angels, and realized that you cannot make a gay film with the master's tools. For the most part, you wind up with what Kristen Warner calls "plastic representation." To this end, the most perceptive critique of Bros I've encountered is SNL's trailer for Megan 2.0 in which they announce that "It's like Bros, but for gays." So while Bros is cute and funny and as gay as can be within the rom-com formula, the formula itself deadens the film's import.

Fire Island comes off as a critique of Bros avant la lettre, having been released a few months prior. It corrects for Bros' concentration on white characters with a gay/Asian director and a gay/Asian screenwriter and star, Joel Kim Booster. But structurally, the two films are de facto clones of one another. Fire Island even has a further structural burden in that it's inspired by Pride and Prejudice. Cute and funny too but so damn well-behaved in its adherence to formulae that it forestalls any obsessive reception.

Bros: B+

Fire Island: B+

Mad Men mess up!

"Lady Lazarus," Season 5, Episode 8 of Mad Men, ends with Don Draper (Jon Hamm) urged by his wife Megan (Jessica Paré) to listen to the final track on the Beatles' brand new LP Revolver, locating the episode sometime in August 1966. Don drops the needle on "Tomorrow Never Knows" and listens with curiosity at first. After a minute or so of tape wizardry with a fierce backbeat, Don turns off the album in apparent disinterest and the episode ends in the ensuing silence. But the track picks up again during the closing credits, a brilliant analogy for how the psychedelic train epitomized by John Lennon's musical acid trip is going to keep on chuggin', passing by Don as it picks up younger, hipper listeners like Megan. 

While Don listens, there is a small stack of albums behind him. Naturally, I was obsessed with the first album in the pile as a potential glimpse into Don's music taste as a lifestyle choice at odds with psychedelia. It turns out the disc in question is Itzhak Perlman, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Lynn Harrell's recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio In A Minor, Op. 50, an album released in 1981 and according to Discogs, Perlman didn't start recording until 1967. I know a music geek like me might be coming off as pedantic here. But the album is quite noticeable in the frame. And while it's possible that Don would dig Tchaikovsky as an accessory to his stereophonic upper-middle-class life, the set dresser or whoever could have found hundreds of LPs to fit that sociological bill and maintain historical accuracy.

One more thing. IMDb claims that in "Christmas Waltz," Season 5, Episode 8, "[w]hen Don and Joan are at the bar, Joan plays Peggy Lee's "Christmas Waltz" on the jukebox. However, this song was never released on a 7" record that would have been in a jukebox at the time." But the version Joan plays is Doris Day's. Compare for yourself. Here's Peggy Lee's version. And here's Doris Day's. And here's the (fabulous) scene in question. Discogs doesn't show a 7" release of Day's version so that goof still holds water.