Gay journalist, Isaac Grafstein, has tried to explain why Billy Eichner's “Bros” tanked at the box office.
Despite opening in more than 3,000 theaters, with a $22 million budget, not to mention an intense marketing campaign by Universal, “Bros” has so far grossed a limp $10.8 million.
As Grafstein notes, “Bros” is definitely not 'groundbreaking'. When Jack tells Ennis, in Brokeback Mountain, 'I wish I knew how to quit you'—that was groundbreaking.
There are moments when Bros is funny—a self-deprecating lampoon of gay life. But mostly it’s a preachy, self-indulgent dumpster fire. At one point, Bobby harangues Aaron’s mother about the need to teach her second-grade students about queer history. The two long hours are replete with partisan finger-wagging, lamentations about erasure, and performative apologies from Bobby for being a “cis white guy.” Half of this alleged comedy is devoted to Bobby’s cranky monologues.
Turns out, I’m not the only one who felt this way: the romcom flopped opening weekend, earning $4.8 million, “about 40 percent less than the low end of prerelease analyst expectations,” according to the New York Times. Alas, Eichner blamed dismal box-office sales, in a now-deleted Twitter tirade, on “homophobic weirdo” audiences “in certain parts of the country”—which is exactly what we’d expect from the movie’s perennially whiney Bobby.
Here’s the truth: bigotry is not to blame for the failure of Bros. In fact, most Americans don't care whom you sleep with (or marry!) and have seen complex, three-dimensional gay characters on their screens for years, from Milk to Moonlight.
Fact of the matter is that “Bros” was a typical rom-com that happened to be made via LGBTQ lens. It also wore its influences on its sleeves, in particular “Annie Hall,” “When Harry Met Sally” and, producer, Judd Apatow’s now-aged brand of irreverent comedy. In fact, “Bros” shares the same blueprint as Apatow’s own “Trainwreck.”
Yes, it doesn’t help that Eichner made a movie for a minority of the population, and then he complained when only, and barely, that minority of the population went to see it. However, if it was any good, and less preachy, then maybe more people would have gone to see it.
I gladly went to see “Bros” because the advanced word-of-mouth via test-screenings was great and I was ready to really embrace it. After all, I’m always in desperate need of a movie that can genuinely make me laugh, but the truth is that, despite a few inspired stretches, “Bros” was just not that funny and, ironically, felt very familiar.
There’s one paragraph at the end where Grafstein acknowledges the one real flaw of “Bros” … It doesn’t acknowledge the banality of life. Each and every line and scene is about gay sex and gay identity. It lacks humanity and feels more like a cliched romcom or, worse, a live-action cartoon.
While we’re at it, am I the only person who remembers Charles Herman-Wurmfeld’s witty “Kissing Jessica Stein,” from 2002? Released 20 years ago and depicting an LGBTQ romance, it was a wonderful film that absolutely nobody talks about today.