Billy Eichner, the star of the new film “Bros” is disappointed that his film didn’t do well on its opening weekend. The film only made about $4.8 million which isn’t enough to cover it’s ad campaign, much less the film’s budget. It’s a startlingly bad opening, especially for a film that got very solid reviews. Eicher is also pretty certain who and what is to blame.

Rolling Stone already has BROS on the list of the best comedies of the 21st century. What’s also true is that at one point a theater chain called Universal and said they were pulling the trailer because of the gay content. (Uni convinced them not to). America, fuck yeah, etc etc.

— billy eichner (@billyeichner) October 2, 2022

Everyone who ISN’T a homophobic weirdo should go see BROS tonight! You will have a blast! And it *is* special and uniquely powerful to see this particular story on a big screen, esp for queer folks who don’t get this opportunity often. I love this movie so much. GO BROS!!! ❤️🌈

— billy eichner (@billyeichner) October 2, 2022

Apparently straight people who didn’t go see this move last weekend are all “homophobic” weirdos. I could be wrong but I don’t think name-calling the potential audience is likely to help the film at the box office.

There are a number of reasons why this film wasn’t a hit, reasons other than homophobia. For one, it’s pretty widely recognized that super hero films have taken over theaters and crowded out nearly everything else. People increasingly seem to go to the theater to see massive spectacle films and not a lot else. You can clearly see that in the list of the top 5 movies of 2022:

1. Top Gun: Maverick
2. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
3. Jurassic World: Dominion
4. The Batman
5. Minions: The Rise of Gru

In fact, you can scroll through the top 30 films this year and it’s basically spectacle films, kids films and a few horror films. There are very few exceptions which include Elvis #9 on this list and a romantic comedy I didn’t see, The Lost City, at #13 on the list.

But there are two caveats about the Lost City. First, it stars two pretty big movie stars as the leads, Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum. Even if you didn’t see the film and don’t want to see it, you’ve probably heard of Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum. By contrast, who are the stars of Bros? Luke Macfarlane and Billy Eichner play the leads. I’ve honestly never heard of either one of them, I don’t think. That doesn’t mean they can’t make a good movie but it probably limits the potential for a big opening weekends if your stars aren’t household names.

The other caveat worth mentioning is that Lost City was listed as an action-oriented romantic comedy. It looked to me like a remake of Romancing the Stone. The point being, it might have been helped at the box office by the fact that it wasn’t a traditional romcom but also had some action/spectacle elements. And with all that it only made $105 million domestically. That’s respectable but it’s not a huge hit by current standards.

If you keep going down the list you eventually get to a more traditional romcom at #37 on the list. That film was Marry Me starring Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson. Again, these are pretty big stars both of whom have made some hit romcoms/comedies in the past and the movie only made $22 million domestically. In fact, Marry Me’s opening weekend was just shy of $8 million, not that much more than Bros at just under $5 million. Why didn’t straight people come out for Marry Me? I don’t know but I’m pretty sure the answer isn’t homophobia.

Finally, let’s just take the bull by the horns. Have you seen the trailer for Bros?

First off, it didn’t make me laugh. The scene in the park was sort of funny but if this trailer is representative of the film it doesn’t seem like a hilarious comedy. Second, it does seem very niche. Every part of it seems intended to be a kind of gay inside joke which is fine but there’s not a lot here that screams it was intended for a straight audience.

And finally, I think there is something about the nature of romantic comedies that they are meant to be a bit of wish fulfilment. I mean, there’s a reason the stars of these things are often very attractive people. There are a lot of guys out there who’d like to imagine that if they just met Sandra Bullock or Jennifer Lopez or (going back a few years) Julia Roberts or Cameron Diaz under the right circumstances, maybe she’d fall for them too. Likewise with women going to see a film starring Channing Tatum. Maybe just maybe…

Is that silly? Yes it is. But it’s undeniably part of the formula that makes romcoms work. And that’s true of Bros as well. The 2nd lead is meant to be the hot guy who takes off his shirt in bars. It’s the same trope just transplanted into a different dynamic. But, frankly, that dynamic doesn’t work for me. There’s no wish fulfillment in Bros for me the way there is in She’s Out of My League. Sorry, Billy Eichner, I’m just wired that way. I could watch Alice Eve read the phone book. It doesn’t mean I hate you.

This whole thing reminds me of a story about lesbian women who were strongly encouraged to be okay with dating trans women because of course trans women are women even if they still have male parts. Last year the BBC reported that some lesbians feared that if they didn’t go along with this they would be labeled TERFs, i.e. the lesbian equivalent of labeling straight people homophobic. But it turns out who you’re attracted to doesn’t always line up with proper ideology. Sometimes when it comes to attraction you just feel it or you don’t.

Anyway, I think the movie business has changed a bit since the heyday of romcoms. Even if that weren’t true, Bros was marketed as a pretty niche product. That’s fine with me. But don’t insult the people who didn’t come to see it as bigots.

Update: Again, haven’t seen the film but this description is interesting and sort of revealing.

Early in the new movie “Bros,” our cranky hero, Bobby (Billy Eichner), a podcaster suffering from chronic relationship phobia, sits at his microphone and rants. “So, these big movie producers came to me and said, ‘We want you to write a rom-com about a gay couple,’ ” he says. A producer, in a flashback, asks Bobby for something a straight guy would go see, a movie that “shows the world that gay relationships and straight relationships are the same. Love is love is love!” “Love is love is love?” Bobby retorts, wincing at the regurgitation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony speech. “No, it’s not. That’s bullshit! . . . Our friendships are different. Our sex lives are different. Our relationships are different.” Minutes later, as if to prove the point, we see Bobby shaving his rear end for a guy on a hookup app who demands an “ass pic.”…

That early scene with the fictitious producer points to the question that animates much of what follows: To what extent can you map a gay love story onto the classic rom-com formula, or vice versa? The film, co-written by Eichner and its director, Nicholas Stoller, references—and wrestles with—rom-com tropes. Bobby watches “You’ve Got Mail” on the couch, but instead of AOL, he’s got Grindr. On his first date with Aaron (Luke Macfarlane), his studly love interest, they go see a movie—and then wind up having a foursome at a “gender-reveal orgy.”…

Even as Eichner has positioned the movie as a breakthrough pop-culture event—one that might show “all the homophobes on the Supreme Court that we want gay love stories,” as he yelled at the MTV Video Music Awards, in August—the movie itself seems to be questioning the value of entering the mainstream. As Bobby laments to a weirdly supportive heterosexual couple, “Gay sex was more fun when straight people were uncomfortable with it.”

I don’t think a traditional romcom with straight leads would work if they went on their first date and ended up in a foursome at an orgy. There’s something pretty traditional about a straight romcom which has fidelity as a subtext.