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+