Subtitles : Bros (2022)

Storyline

TLDR: This movie is an annoying man's self-written-and-starred-in fantasy of a moderately intelligent lawyer jock hottie falling for him despite his painfully pretentious and grating personality. Not great, only sort of good.Billy Eichner is a gay Woody Allen a la "Annie Hall," and "Bros" is just as cringey as the classic (but straight) precedent of New York relationship drama. Despite some funny moments (Debra Messing in particular), the plot is so contrived around a protagonist who is extremely difficult to sympathize with (again, very Woody Allen) that it's an exhausting watch.It's overly self-referential as a gay movie calling out the faults of gay cinema history whiledoing remarkably little to be transgressive. Apart from representation of QTBIPOC museum staff, it's not breaking new ground in exploration queer life experiences. There is some surface-level awareness of queer community diversity, but this is a story of two privileged white cis men in New York. This particular emotionally-unavailable-New-York-men plot has been done to death for decades (A Very Natural Thing, 1970-something, comes to mind).While it pretty accurately and humorously displays gay men's sexual openness, it falls into the morality trap of delegitimizing relationships that begin online, as if you can only really fall in love with someone you meet in-person first... Really a trash take for 2022. There is portrayal of other weird relationship dynamics that I didn't enjoy, but won't get into the details.The production is high-budget, but the writing is mediocre. It feels like the only purpose of the story is to fulfill Bill Eichner's sensitive jock wet dream. It's too bad, because there were some missed opportunities to make this a really complex and enjoyable contemporary comedy.