Too Young to See "Bros?"

Luke MacFarlane (L) and Billy Eichner in "Bros"

In the new rom-com Bros, a teacher tells her grown son's boyfriend that she keeps "gay" out of her classroom. "Second grade is too early," she says.

She has a point. At 63, I may be too young to have seen some of Bros -- sex scenes that verge on slapstick comedy. Gay guys really do that? and that?!

While the mother (Amanda Bearse) talks with "Bobby" (co-writer Billy Eichner), Bobby tries to "tone down" himself, not to embarrass his boyfriend Aaron (Luke MacFarlane). But Bobby does push back, politely, more emphatically with each sip of wine. The awkward dinner is an example of how the movie is what Eichner wanted, as he told The New Yorker Hour, "laugh-out-loud funny but authentic."

Bobby says that second grade is the best time to introduce children to the knowledge that gays exist, before the bullying from some and self-loathing for others. When you grow up seeing no one like you, and learning that grown-ups are hush-hush about anyone like you, and that your friends, who don't suspect the truth, have derogatory words and jokes about people like you -- well, you learn to "tone down" yourself and to despise your secret self, and yourself for being secret.

So the most telling moment in this rom-com comes down to trust: can a gay man trust that anyone finds him worthy of being loved?

With that authentic experience at its heart, Bros does what all the other good rom-coms do, pulling us into the story of two appealing people who can't seem to get together -- Bobby tells Aaron, "You may be even more emotionally unavailable than I am!" -- and lifting us up when they finally do.