Ah, a Friday refreshment from the new trailer for Bros, Billy Eichner’s gay rom-rom due later this fall, which feels so far away but is really just three months from now. Until then, though, I will watch the instantly classic Fire Island and Notting Hill on a loop until Bros comes out and autumn begins, and I throw You’ve Got Mail into the rotation, too, because autumn DOES make me want pencil bouquets, dammit (and then While You Were Sleeping comes in for the holidays). I dug the first trailer, I dig the second trailer, please just give me this movie right now. I am done being Adult and Professional, I just want to be Stupid and Romantic for the rest of the year.

 

Bros continues to look very funny, and who doesn’t like an opposites attract romance, but I realized while watching Fire Island that great rom-coms are about more than just the chemistry of the leading couple, they’re also about the chemistry of the ensemble. Fire Island has a great ensemble supporting Noah (Joel Kim Booster) and Will (Conrad Ricamora), which enhances the central romance (rom-com characters tend to be standardized within the genre, giving them believable friend groups goes a long way to humanizing the archetypical behaviors that come with such well-worn—and loved—tropes). While You Were Sleeping also has a great ensemble—it's as much a love story between Lucy and Jack as it is Lucy and the Callaghans—and the concept of Bridgerton is that we will love the whole family so much we’ll watch eight separate love stories. The trailers for Bros are doing a great job selling me on the romance between Billy Eichner’s and Luke Macfarlane’s characters, but I want to see more of the ensemble. Deliver a great ensemble, not just a great romance, and we might have another instant classic on our hands.