The Star Online: Entertainment: TV & Radio

Posted: 14 Jun 2011 03:36 AM PDT

Brotherhood, on screen and off, has never been so strong.

MOVIE and television couples often rely on the boy-girl variety to add sizzle to the ratings.

Bones is a typical example of such a drama. David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel play FBI agent Seeley Booth and forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, lead characters who have an obvious soft spot for each other and are always on the verge of getting hooked up, a situation that is milked every season to date.

However, recently, one cannot help but be aware that change is in the air, and there is a new formula in town, of the boy-meets-boy variety, that seems to have gotten the knickers of screenwriters all in a twist.

Say hello to bromance, the less conventional yet more conservative cousin of romance. The word, a conflation of "brother" and "romance", entered the lexicon as a description of a non-sexual, exceedingly close friendship between two men.

On screen, bromances are making their presence felt. Take, for example, the latest season of the investigative medical drama House M.D. The coming together of Hugh Laurie's brilliant diagnostician Dr Gregory House and Lisa Edelstein's hospital administrator Dr Lisa Cuddy may have taken six seasons to bear fruit, but while the pairing turned sour almost as soon as it began, it is House's bromance with his close friend, Robert Sean Leonard's Dr James Wilson, that looks set to continue into the next season and beyond.

In the recent British incarnation of Sherlock Holmes in the short BBC series Sherlock, Martin Freeman's Dr John Watson is more than just a housemate to Benedict Cumberbatch's Holmes. The two sort of hit it off on their first meeting, and the relationship quickly develops into a bromance, in which the two trust each other to the extent of putting their lives in each other's hands.

Bromance is not just an on-screen exclusive. It was surely the high-profile boy-boy relationships among some Hollywood stars that sparked off the attention in the first place.

The first couple to make a splash was Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Way before Bennifer, a conflation of Ben and Jennifer (Lopez or Garner), there was already Matt and Ben.

The two childhood friends, who used to act together in school plays and in bit roles when they were starting out, co-wrote the script for Good Will Hunting, which went on to win them an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1997 but, more importantly, got them on the Hollywood A-list.

The two best friends started the bromance ball rolling when they bought his-and-his Jeep Grand Cherokees, in green for Matt and black for Ben. Despite pursuing successful individual careers, the two remain tight and hang around in the same social circles, with regular boys' nights out. In the ultimate compliment, their relationship has even been satirised in an off-Broadway play!

The other significant celebrity bromance is that between George Clooney and Brad Pitt. While some actors become friends after being in the same movie, these two pals seem to make it a point to be in the same film. The Ocean's franchise is the most representative of their happy collaboration.

The obvious on-screen chemistry between the two extends to their relationship off screen – they go on double dates and play pranks on each other, and also engage in charity activities together, showing that they would rather spend time with each other even without the movie link-ups.

Reel bromances are going totally mainstream. In 2009, Paul Rudd and Jason Segel starred in what was touted as the first bromantic comedy, I Love You, Man. In the movie, Rudd's Peter Klaven is about to get married when he realises he doesn't have any male friend whom he would like to break the news to.

Klaven sets out to find a male pal so he can have a meaningful best man for his wedding. The situation looks bad until he meets Segel's Sydney Fife. The two bond almost immediately, and this is cemented when they discover that they share a passion for the same music during their man-dates.

I Love You, Man was a hit in the domestic US market, proving that a brom-com could do as well as a rom-com.

Movie producers looking to cash in on the phenomenon have been looking to cop partnerships as a natural source of bromances. The 2010 hit The Other Guys, starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg as cops in a mismatched partnership, was also promoted in part as a bromantic comedy.

Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto went from gym mates to co-stars in the reboot of Star Trek in 2009 where they play the iconic Captain James T. Kirk and Mr Spock, characters who have an intimate bond built up through their adventures together on the starship Enterprise.

However, unlike the original actors William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, who never quite got along in real life, Pine and Quinto are so close off-screen that they have admitted that bromance was the word that came closest to describing their relationship.

In the Twilight series, some fans have commented that Robert Pattinson's vampire Edward Cullen had greater chemistry with Taylor Lautner's werewolf Jacob Black than with the insipid Bella Swan, played by a listless Kristen Stewart. The bromance almost outshines the romance in this case!

On the small screen, the bromance between Matt Bomer's con man Neal Caffrey and Tim DeKay's FBI agent Peter Burke is the basis of the television series White Collar. The two sparkle with their repartee and obvious fondness for each other.

In Glee, it is the bromance of Chris Colfer's Kurt Hummel and Cory Monteith's Finn Hudson that shines rather than the more ordinary romance between Hummel and Darren Criss's Blaine Anderson.

When Kurt's father gets together with Finn's mother, the two boys find themselves linked but with little to talk about. Their journey towards understanding, up to the point where Finn defends Kurt from a bunch of bullies, ranks better than most of the romance stories in teen dramas.

"Women are like one's clothes," goes a Chinese saying that relegates women to the status of apparel in a man's life. Women, it suggests, will come and go, but man-to-man relationships are what counts. It does sound like bromances are nothing more than old wine in new bottles, although some would argue that in today's more egalitarian world, the emphasis on them harks back to a patriarchal emphasis best left behind.

In this column, writer Hau Boon Lai ponders the lives, loves and liberties of celebrities.

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Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Isnin, 13 Jun 2011