Billy Eichner’s Gay Rom-Com ‘Bros’ a Hit Despite Review Bombers

Author: Christopher Wiggins

The reviews are in, and despite homophobes’ attempt to review-bomb the film, Bros is a hit.

Billy Eichner’s new flick, the first major movie studio-backed and -produced romantic comedy with two gay characters as the leads and subjects of the film, was released in theaters Friday.

Rotten Tomatoes loves Bros, rating the comedy 95 percent fresh.

Marya E. Gates at Roger Ebert gives Bros 2.5 stars overall but rates the movie as entertaining with plenty of inside jokes and nods at things the LGBTQ+ community will identify. In keeping with the motto, IYKYK. (If you know, you know.)

On Metacritic, Bros earned a 77 out of 100, and the AV Club gives Bros 4.5 out of 5 points.

So, this might be controversial, but let’s advocate for accuracy in movie reviewing.

As of publication, Bros has a 6.9 out of 10 rating on IMDB. However, because homophobes and trolls targeted the film, it’s safe to assume the rating is much higher. 

The movie comes in with 647 or 37.5 percent of top-scoring 10s and 615 or 35.6 percent of the lowest-scoring ones.

Most others rated the movie 8 or 9, which would indicate that many are fake votes and thus should be discounted.

Review-bombing occurs when users bombard a movie with negative reviews to affect its overall rating. As a result of its origin in the gaming community, review-bombing has become one of the most popular weapons in toxic fandoms’ arsenals. 

The latest target of this practice is the gay rom-com. Critics were overwhelmingly positive about Bros (which features an all-queer cast) when it was released at the Toronto International Film Festival, but bigoted reviewers flooded Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB with denunciations of the film. 

Before Friday, compared to 95 percent positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, the film’s critical rating on IMDB had dropped to just 5.5, Forbes reports.

Due to the heavy barrage of fake negative reviews, both sites paused the audience review features. 

Eichner tweeted about the phenomenon last week before the film was released. The Advocate’s sibling publication Out had written about the rating bombings at the time, and Eichner took notice.

“FUCK ‘EM!!! IF YOU’RE NOT A HOMOPHOBIC PIECE OF SHIT, GO SEE BROS!!!” Eichner wrote.

Original Article on The Advocate
Author: Christopher Wiggins