Culture: Hollywood bowsto brotherly love

"I don't like the term 'romantic comedy'," said the Hollywood producer sitting across from me. "The films we make are comedies with romance."

I was in Los Angeles, meeting a couple of film producers, and had made the mistake of pitching a series of romantic comedies. Among the Hollywood cognoscenti, there is a consensus that romantic comedies are "over". "Everyone knows the formula," continued the producer. "Boy meets girl, they get together, break up, get back together again... it's boring."

Needless to say, this being Hollywood, they haven't abandoned this winning formula for something more original. They've just tweaked it. Hence "comedies with romance". The two examples this producer cited were The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up. The main way in which they depart from traditional romcoms is that their point of view is much more masculine. Indeed, another phrase doing the rounds is "bromantic comedies" – romcoms, but with more time given to the male leads goofing around with their friends – their "bros". There are two films out now in the US that fall into this category, Step Brothers and Pineapple Express, but the best example is probably last summer's Superbad.

What is interesting about this new sub-genre is that on the face of it their whole sensibility is less gay than your average romantic comedy – it is hard to imagine a more heterosexual male lead than Seth Rogen (pictured in Superbad, above right) – but, beneath the surface, they are pregnant with latent homosexuality. In Superbad, the couple who get together, break up, then get back together again are Jonah Hill and Michael Cera. OK, they're not romantically involved, but they clearly love each other and are able to express their feelings in a way the previous generation would never have dared.

I think the reason these films have been such hits is that they reflect a more easygoing attitude toward homosexuality among the all-important movie-going demographic of under-25 males. They're not scared to be thought of as "gay" by their male peers, possibly because being homosexual isn't as socially taboo as it once was. Paradoxically, the gay liberation movement has had the opposite effect on this generation to the one conservatives feared. Instead of making men anxious and confused about their sexuality, it has left them much more relaxed about it.