As you can see I wrote this review the weekend the movie was released, which was in October 2022. I do not know why I never posted it here. Then the movie was on one of the many streaming channels that I do not subscribe to. But now it is on cable (Starz) and streaming on Hulu if you have the Starz add-on. 

I decided to be a gay ally and go see BROS on the opening weekend. When I was asked to choose a seat, I was surprised to see that no one had chosen a seat yet. I was the only one in the theater until just before the start, two men sat in the row across and behind me and one guy sat in the row across and in front of me. So only four people in the theater of what I consider a gay-friendly neighborhood.

If you have seen the trailer, you know the basic story. Billy Eichner plays a toned-down version of his Billy in the Street character, who is a podcaster and on the board for the new LGBTQ+ history museum soon to open in NYC. Luke Macfarlane plays the romantic interest, similar to the men he plays in Hallmark movies. It is a typical rom-com except it is a gay love story with the principal cast all played by LGBTQ+ people (whether the character is gay or straight) and the crew was mostly LGBTQ+.

Also from the trailer, I knew it would be funny and it is. Despite the small crowd, we were all laughing out loud. What I did not expect was that the movie has real heart – so much so that I was crying at several parts and was crying when I left the movie.

The two songs used in the trailers (George Michael’s “Freedom! ‘90” and Queen’s “Somebody to Love”) are nowhere to be found in the movie. The song used in the P-town beach scene is one of my favorite songs and is perfect and was my first cry. There are also some small moments in the trailer that do not appear in the movie. There are a bunch of cameos at the end and also a few during the movie.

A big surprise that has been mentioned in some interviews is that Eichner has a great voice and he sings twice in the movie. Including the rom-com trope of unexpectedly singing to the love interest.

Besides being funny and sentimental, the movie gives us some LGBTQ+ history and mentions the devastation of AIDS to the gay community without saying the word or being preachy or focusing on the “tragedy of being gay” but the point is brought across clearly.

It is R-rated because there are sex scenes. No genitalia but they are not scenes you would see in a heterosexual rom-com. In many ways, it is very much a gay love story because there are issues that usually do not come up in a straight relationship (at least not on film) but in other ways it is universal.