Bros (2022)

I don’t want to leave a cliche review so I’m going to try my damnedest not to…I’ll start by saying I love Billy on the street and Billy Eichner. He’s unapologetically himself in a modern world where personality is dated, he just doesn’t care. I can relate to that.Next I’d like to say, as a millennial who was OBSESSED with rom-coms, as that’s primarily what was in fashion during my coming up-it’s I know a fair amount of what those are and take to be good.This missed the mark. Big time.I went in like everyone who opts to see this movie with an open mind. I was along for the ride and it was a fairly pleasant one for the majority of the first third. Plenty of familiar archetypes of the genre and community. Things that anyone would get a laugh out of I did. There were moments when I existentially felt vulnerable and even thought to myself, this must be what heteronormative people have felt for decades during it. Which was strange and oddly life affirming. This is all the good I took from it.Billy played himself, mostly because that’s all he can play. And okay well. So Billy, was Bobby, of course. I’m sure that was even his idea. And it was a good one but the major problem lies in the fact that who Billy is as a person is not what a romantic comedy person is. He should have played and made the character something else. They went so far and made an entire over extended dialog to try and explain and justify him for what he is which seems more about his personality disorder than his sexuality. They should have promoted it for that instead really. They might have got more people to watch. More people can relate. The scene I’m talking of on the beach is when the entire thing took a nose dive and I felt so anxious and uncomfortable the entire rest of the movie until the end when they reach a resolution. Endings in rom- coms should be peaceful and I continued feeling on edge until the final song. It ruined it.There were a lot of tropes and moments where I did feel like I was in a time warp to easier times in the 90s. Moments with slow mo, popular beloved love songs, etc that I appreciated and felt like a bear hug (no pun intended) but all and all this movie is so prickly. It doesn’t give you that warm feeling expected and as much as a Billy fan I am it’s because of him.