It follows the lives of a group of gay friends in West Hollywood, centered on a restaurant owned by the fatherly Jack (John Mahoney) and the softball team he sponsors.

The movie was met with generally favorable reviews from critics, receiving praise for portraying homosexuality as normal and its characters as average gay men.

[4] The film had a working title of The Broken Hearts League as well as 8x10's, a term Berlanti's sister used to describe the men he dated.

[5] Billy Porter, who was the least known of the actors cast at the time, won the role of Taylor when he "[imbued] the character with heart and something real" in his audition.

It features a cameo from Kerr Smith, who knew Berlanti as the showrunner on Dawson's Creek and enjoyed the script so much he asked to be a part of the film.

The site's consensus states that the film "often feels like an amalgam of 70s sitcoms – though a hunky lead and a sweet central romance provide soapy delights".

"[19] Ebert noted that "instead of angst, Freudian analysis, despair and self-hate, the new generation sounds like the cast of a sitcom, trading laugh lines and fuzzy truisms.

"[19] CNN's Paul Clinton also lauded The Broken Hearts Club for focusing on "the universal themes of romance, acceptance and family", as opposed to AIDS, coming out, and sex.

"[3] Lisa Schwarzbaum from Entertainment Weekly called it "a majority oriented movie that assumes sophisticated familiarity with a sexual minority".

[3][19][24][25] Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly exclaimed that the film shows "how far homosexual characters have come since The Boys in the Band, sad AIDS dramas, and cute identity peekaboo sitcoms".