This movie is about confidence and not letting anyone tell you you’re not worthy of achieving a particular goal; and that theme, more than the raunchy and sometimes routine comedy, makes its story a standout. Billy Eichner, known for his hilarious man on the street sketch highjinks, stars in and co-wrote Bros (B) with director Nicholas Stoller, and there’s a sense of gravitas and urgency to the proceedings as it’s one of the first gay rom-coms from a legacy Hollywood studio. Eichner’s acerbic personality often makes for an awkward force fit as the protagonist who has given up on finding a relationship, but luckily he acts opposite a very sturdy and funny co-lead in Luke Macfarlane, his polar opposite. Eichner inhabits a character who hosts podcasts and curates a museum but doesn’t really seem a natural especially on the latter, but his occupations are catalysts for him to encounter a diverse batch of characters and set into motion tropes of the genre including meeting cute at a party and hoping to get a call to hang out again. All the rom-com conventions are here through a gay lens both funny and poignant as the characters reckon with the history undergirding their fairly privileged NYC lives, and Stoller mines goldmines of incidental comedy out of the ensemble. There are snarky throwaway comic lines and occasionally some broadly funny physical comedy, but the main through-line was having something to prove much more than getting into a funny groove. Tips of the hat go to Bowen Yang and Debra Messing for very funny bits. The movie gets high marks for being high minded but could have used a little more lowbrow. The best parts are the more conventional “falling in love” sequences, and some of the other trappings feel like they are trying too hard to have Something to Say.