The new Universal Pictures films stars Billy Eichner as Bobby, a podcaster who has given up on finding love when he meets Aaron, a handsome and buff estate lawyer who usually wouldn’t be his type. The movie, which was co-written by Eichner and director Nicholas Stoller, also stars Guy Branam, Guillermo Diaz, Ts Madison, Raven, and Bowen Yang.
While it’s the first gay romantic comedy film to be released in theaters by a major studio and the first with an all-LGBTQ+ principal cast, it’s not the first gay rom-com ever. In fact, there have been several over the years, with quite a few coming out in the past few years alone.
While you buy your tickets to see Bros today, here are some other gay rom-coms you can check out!
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Bros isn’t the only big gay rom-com released this year. Joel Kim Booster’s Fire Island was a terrific example of a gay rom-com released on Hulu that hit all the right spots. This movie was a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice, also starring Bowen Yang, Conrad Ricamora, Matt Rogers, and Tomás Matos, set at the gay destination of Fire Island Pines was one of our favorite movies of the year. If you haven’t seen this one, check it out now.
Alice Wu wrote and directed this masterpiece about a Chinese-Canadian mother and daughter both trying to deal with secrets of their own. Just as her mother is trying to hide an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, Wil (Michelle Krusiec) is trying to figure out how to come out to her conservative mother and community as a lesbian.
This now-classic teen rom-com kicked the doors open for gay teen romances. Starring Nick Robinson and directed by Greg Berlanti, this movie follows a closeted teen who’s afraid he’ll be outed when the emails he’s written to a fellow gay student are discovered.
Crush is another movie from this year that scratched that queer rom-com itch for us. It stars queer former-Disney-stars Rowan Blanchard and Auli’i Cravalho as two queer high school teens who form an unlikely bond after one of them is forced to join the track team when she gets in trouble at school.
Billy Porter’s directorial debut was this adorable teen rom-com starring Eva Reign as trans teen Kelsa and Abubakr Ali as Khal, the boy who has a crush on her. The movie has a great message for queer youth and had plenty of cute moments.
This Christmas rom-com from Netflix stars Michael Urie, Philemon Chambers, and Bros star Luke Macfarlane. The movie is about Peter, a “perpetually single man whose best friend poses as his boyfriend just as his mom sets him up on an incredible blind date with her handsome trainer.” It also stars Barry Bostwick, Jennifer Robertson, Kathy Najimy, and Jennifer Coolidge.
While this isn’t the most light-hearted rom-com ever, Happiest Season did give queer women a chance to see a love story about them made with a big budget and big stars, including Kristen Stewart, Mackenzie Davis, Aubrey Plaza, and Dan Levy. The movie follows a woman named Harper who still hasn’t come out to her family despite bringing her girlfriend home with her for the holidays.
This movie was originally made for Freeform and stars Grey’s Anatomy’s Jake Borelli and Niko Terho as two former high school enemies who get roped into sharing a car together on a long road trip to a mutual friend’s engagement party.
This rom-com starring Keiynan Lonsdale, Dylan Sprouse and Sarah Hyland debuted on Amazon Prime this year. It follows "a young man in a tricky situation, who follows the advice of his unconventional best friend (Sprouse) and uses social media to create a fake boyfriend to keep his awful ex-lover out of his life. But everything backfires when he meets the real love of his life, and breaking up with his fake boyfriend proves hard to do."
One of the great classics of queer cinema is this campy rom-com from Jamie Babbitt. Natasha Lyonne plays a high school cheerleader who is sent to gay conversion camp because her parents think she’s gay. While she begins the movie in denial, after she meets fellow camper Graham, her views on everything change. The movie also stars RuPaul, Melanie Lynskey, Mink Stole, and Michelle Williams.
