Bros: Love ain't pretty

Bros (2022) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, and quite generously, for relentless nudity, profanity and explicit sexual content

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.30.22

This is not your grandmother’s rom-com.

 

Billy Eichner and Nicholas Stoller’s boldly audacious dramedy is ground-breaking: not merely for its gender-appropriate casting, but also for the story’s unflinchingly candid depiction of modern-day love among (primarily) gay men.

 

Bobby (Billy Eichner, standing) floats an idea to his fellow museum board members:
from left, Angela (Ts Madison), Wanda (Miss Lawrence), Tamara (Eve Lindley),
Robert (Jim Rash) and Cherry (Dot-Marie Jones). Alas, they aren't buying it...

Eichner and Stoller’s caustic, sharp-edged script also is wickedly funny, with the former — also starring as our key protagonist — demonstrating perfect comic timing with a relentless series of arch one-liners, aggrieved declamations and impassioned laments.

But conservative viewers be advised: The R rating is generous, given this film’s frequent and quite explicit sexual content. Although … ah … dangling bits remain off-camera, virtually nothing else is left to the viewer’s imagination.

 

The story actually is an amplification of the material Eichner has long delivered via stand-up and sketch comedy, notably on the long-running TV series Billy on the Street.

 

The setting is trendy New York, where Bobby Leiber (Eichner) has carved out a laudable, media-centric career as an observer and ferocious activist in the LGBTQ+ scene. He has a successful podcast, writes books, gives speeches, and frequently is recognized for his advocacy.

 

His newest project is massive, as a member of the board of a revolutionary, as-yet unfinished LGBTQIA+ Museum.

 

Bobby ideally would cast himself as a “personality,” despite the fact that his actual personality keeps getting in the way. He’s caustic, domineering, condescending and totally dismissive of outdated concepts such as “dating” and “love.” He’s 40 years old and defiantly proud of being a singleton.

 

He’s also — as quickly becomes obvious — his own worst enemy: wound tighter than a crystal radio coil, while suppressing a boatload of emotional baggage.

 

Trouble is, the personal lives of his friends are evolving, whether via marriage, families or polyamorous relationships such as throuples. Bobby feels increasingly left out … although he’d die before admitting as much.

 

The Women: Chick shtick

The Women (2008) • View trailer for The Women
Two stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for profanity, sexual candor and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.18.08
Buy DVD: The Women • Buy Blu-Ray: The Women [Blu-ray]

Sometimes, even with top-quality talent, everything goes wrong.

Bad casting decisions. Inconsistent tone. Inexperienced and tin-eared directorial decisions.

Having just learned that her husband is having a rather public affair, Mary
Haines (Meg Ryan, center) flees with her daughter (India Ennenga, left) to her
mother's (Candice Bergen) "summer cabin," while trying to determine her next
move. Sadly, the one thing Mary won't get is good advice or rock-solid support
from her three best friends, because they're too frequently AWOL in writer/
director Diane English's clumsy modern remake of The Women.

Let's begin with the first mistake: the extremely ill-advised decision to remake a play that first hit the big screen in 1939, when director George Cukor guided Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell, Joan Fontaine and Paulette Goddard — among others — in his snarky film adaptation of Clare Booth Luce's The Women.

Luce's play emerged at a time when women — even rich society women — had far fewer options. This isn't mere historical observation; it's crucial to the nature of Luce's play, because a woman of that era risked everything if she chose to divorce her husband, even if the philandering swine deserved it.

Arguing for calm reflection — insisting that the betrayed wife carefully weigh her options, and give serious consideration to forgiving the cad — might have made more sense on the eve of World War II.

In today's world, however, we cannot for a second imagine why all her friends — and even her mother! — would keep insisting that Mary Haines (Meg Ryan) grant a second chance to the off-camera lout who has stepped out on her with a tarted-up perfume counter babe employed at Saks.

Or why Mary would seriously consider such advice.

It's particularly difficult because we never meet her husband, and therefore have no emotional investment in his point of view. That's the gimmick here, as it was in Cukor's film: The cast is entirely female. Whether at home, at work or striding down New York City sidewalks, these characters never encounter — nor do we ever see — any men.

The word "contrived" leaps to mind, which also pretty well covers writer/director Diane English's script.

Cukor, even though he did operate at a time when the central storyline "read" well, had the good sense to retain Luce's wonderfully nasty tone. Her play is a verbal slugfest, with even the central core friends behaving quite badly at times; all her characters deliver caustic, often barbed comments with the skill of a Jane Austen heroine.

Even today, Cukor's film remains a howl, its rarefied cattiness just as deliciously arch as the rat-a-tat tough guy (and gal) talk in the best 1940s and '50s noir thrillers. Point being, we're not intended to take anything all that seriously; Luce's women are deliberated exaggerated archetypes who take merciless glee while chewing up the scenery ... and each other.