Bruno
Universal
R
88 Minutes
2009
Sacha Baron Cohen is either a madman or a genius. Or perhaps he's both.
His "gotcha" style of comedy is anything but subtle, and though it can be crude and vulgar, it also works on a deeper level - highlighting the prejudices, fear, and downright stupidity of those he manages to trick into an interview.
One must admire his dedication to his work. The British comedian rarely appears as himself for interviews, and when in character not even the film's director can coax the real man out. He truly inhabits the over the top personas of three famous characters.
Though his first film, Ali G. Indahouse was largely panned, and never even received a theatrical release in the United States, his follow up with a smash success. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan not only earned more than triple its budget, it made numerous Top Ten lists and was even nominated for an Acamedy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. After this success, a fierce bidding war ensued for the rights to Baron Cohen's one remaining character, the gay Austrian fashionista, Bruno.
Like Borat before it, Bruno is something of a faux documentary. The plot is thin and it's really just an excuse for Baron Cohen to put himself into uncomfortable, sometimes humiliating, and always hysterical situations. The film feels more like a collection of vignettes from his original BBC and HBO shows, strung together with small segues in between to keep a semblance of a story, but really it's just about seeing how much he can offend people.
So just how offensive is Bruno? Within the first five minutes of the film, a couple walked out of the theater as a montage of scenes showing the titular character and his boyfriend having sex - and experimenting with toys, champagne bottles, and chairs. Within the first half hour, there are numerous scenes featuring an extreme close-up of a man's penis being flung around to the beat of hardcore club music, including what is most likely the first ever use of CG on the male reproductive organ in film history.
And you know what? It's all hilarious. If you went into the theater expecting anything less, you obviously weren't very familiar with Baron Cohen's work. The man has no fear, and often the film's funniest scenes are the ones involving his deviant sexual behavior, which sees him in a variety of bondage outfits in public places.
I suppose it's still worth mentioning the basic plot of the movie, paper-thin though it is. After being fired from his popular fashion German-language show Funkyzeit, Bruno comes to America on a quest to become a celebrity. Along the way, he crashes a (real life) fashion show, attempts to interview Paula Abdul about her humanitarian causes while inviting her to sit on his "Mexican chair people," adopts an African baby, tries to make out with former Presidential candidate Ron Paul, attemps to bring peace to the Middle East, and eventually even tries to go straight - but not before being chained to his gay assistant and running down the street, half-nude, right into the middle of a Westboro Baptist Church protest. If you've never heard of the Westboro Baptist Church, they're the group of lunatics whose slogan is "God Hates Fags" - so you can appreciate the humor when they're confronted by two gay men in S&M gear.
Much like Borat, it's difficult to distinguish what scenes were staged and which were legimately clever setups. Celebrity cameos are numerous, including a blink-and-you'll-miss-it "interview" with Harrison Ford. Part of what makes Baron Cohen's characters so funny is the way they put real people under a microscope, and there's plenty of that here.
Take an early interview with a runway model, who genuinely believes that her job of walking and turning on a runway is one of the most difficult jobs in the world, or the two public relations girls Bruno interviews when trying to find the newest "in" cause to support. The latter two are so vapid and brainless that it may actually make you mad as they struggle to explain where Darfur is, or why global warming is dangerous.
At barely under an hour and a half long, Bruno doesn't feel so much like a motion picture as an elongated sketch, but it manages to sustain the humor that made them so compelling and laugh out loud funny in the first place. It has already attracted its share of controversy from overly sensitive activist groups, but they're missing the whole point. The idea that a character so flamboyant, so obviously contrived and shocking for the sake of being shocking still shocks is a sign that the world as a whole has grown too sensitive.
Bruno may not be the funniest film of the year, but it is definitely a raunchy good time - as long as you know what you're getting into.
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