Movie Reviews

Bros

Bros is a romantic comedy with the twist being that the main characters are gay. Okay, but is it any good? I mean, there are plenty of forgettable rom-coms out there, and I've suffered through many. Happily, though, Bros is an above average romantic comedy that is smart, often laugh out loud funny, and actually has something to say.

Neurotic podcaster Bobby Leiber (Billy Eichner) claims to be perfectly happy living the single life, and hooking up with random men on Tinder. That is until he meets lawyer Aaron Shepard (Luke MacFarlane). The problem is that these two men like each other, but neither one wants to be in a committed relationship. A significant subplot involves Bobby being a curator of a proposed LGBTQ+ National History Museum.

The film's star, Eichner, who is a gay man, co-wrote the screenplay with director Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The FiveYear Engagement), and it feels frank and honest. One good scene is when Eichner's character talks about past jobs and getting passed up for promotion because he is gay, and the straight people who did get the jobs were less talented. It may have happened to Eichner in real life.

Aside from these sobering moments, Bros S mile is not to be confused with the 1975 Michael Ritchie directed charmer of the same name that satirizes beauty pageants. No, this new Smile is a grim horror movie that is well made, but not a very thrilling or fun scarefest.

Psychiatric ward therapist Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) is called in to meet with a very frightened young woman (Caitlin Stasey) who claims that she is being terrorized by an evil entity that pretends to be other people. A week prior, the woman witnessed her college professor bludgeon himself to death with a hammer. Rose tries to explain to the woman that the traumatic situation is causing hallucinations. In response, the woman freaks out, flashes a creepy smile, and then slits her own throat in front of a horrified Rose. Soon afterward, Rose, herself, starts having hallucinations of people smiling at her and other weird images. Rose's past trauma of her abusive mother, who died of a drug overdose, also begins to boil to the surface. She feels she is unraveling, and it is putting stress on her relationships with both her fiance, Trevor (Jessie T. Usher), and her sister, Holly (Gillian Zinser), so she seeks help from her ex, Joel (Kyle Gallner), who is a police officer.

Basically, this is like Night of the Demon (1957), It Follows (2014), or, take your pick,

is really funny. One hilarious scene involves actress Debra Messing, playing a fictional version of herself, as a potential donor to the museum. Then there is the threesome scene that becomes a foursome when a guy comes out of nowhere and invites himself in.

Bros also satirizes gay themed films starring straight actors in gay roles, and also how these same films try to tone it down for straight mainstream audiences. Bobby even recounts a story of how movie producers approached him about writing a movie and said to him, “We want you to write a rom-com about a gay couple. Something a straight guy might even like and watch with his girlfriend.” Sure, Bros, itself, wants mainstream success and the two leads are very likable for mainstream audiences, so maybe the movie is contradicting itself somewhat, but the jokes are funny, and it has a lot of heart.

Smile

The Ring (2002) or Ringu (1998) where a person has so many days to pass a diabolical curse on to someone else before he or she is consumed by evil. Clearly, it's a concept that has worked many times before, and while Smile has some effectively creepy moments, it really isn't that scary. The many jump scares are telegraphed so far in advance that they fail to work.

The best part of Smile is the central performance by Bacon, the daughter of actors Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon. Sosie Bacon is excellent here, really making us understand and feel for the character and the terrible burdens placed on her. In fact, the amount of despair that the character endures feels so cruel that the movie isn't really that much fun to watch.

Smile is the debut feature from writer and director Parker Finn, and is based on his 2020 short film Laura Hasn't Slept. The guy has talent. In Smile he shows off interesting visuals, and draws excellent performances from his actors. His screenplay is mainly what trips him up. It is most routinely plotted and so predictable that I knew how the movie was going to end long before the halfway mark. And speaking of the ending, it is pretty lousy. Groans could be heard from the audience when the end credits began to roll, as there was an air of disappointment at the end of Smile.