Toronto film festival: The comedian’s glossy, Judd Apatow-produced queer comedy is incredibly funny and insightfully smart
Billy Eichner’s slick Judd Apatow-produced gay comedy Bros carries with it the specific sort of baggage that only a “first” is forced to carry. As the first theatrically released studio gay rom-com, the first studio film co-written by and starring an openly gay man and the first studio film with a majority LGBTQ+ cast, it’s a light movie made heavy with expectation – will it be gay enough or good enough or accessible enough or profitable enough – an unfair yet unavoidable heap of crosses to bear.
Eichner is of course acutely aware of this and so is his film, through-lined with fears over the difficulties of making gay art, how to feel important as a gay person and how to exist and excel in a culture dominated by straight people (should we beat them or join them?). His comedy, best known from Billy on the Street and the short-lived series Difficult People, has always been intense and anxiety-ridden, he has a nervy energy that’s uncomfortably infectious to watch (“Name a woman!”), and it tracks that his first film as a writer would be also filled with existential gay angst.
