Review: Bruno

Queer as Folk

Three years ago, when an extremely long titled movie that was short-handed as Borat hit cinemas, I was convinced that I had seen a completely different movie than the rest of the world. I heard people that Sacha Baron Cohen, the film's star, had taken a hilarious character and used this outrageous platform as a way to peer into the American culture and expose our subtle racism and anti-Semitism in order to bring a better understanding of our way of life. What I saw was a man who put on a funny accent and got gullible people to admit and do things they normally wouldn't do, put it on camera and point and laugh at their lapse in judgement. That was essentially the movie, and most of the time it worked. The success is not found the second time out, and the spark is never even close to being ignited like it was before.

Cohen once again uses one of his characters made famous by Da Ali G Show that was popular in his home country of England. Bruno is a gay, Austrian fashionista who works for a fashion centric television show in that country. The film's surprisingly heavy handed plot has Bruno making a trip to a fashion show where his new Velcro suit causes a major disruption on the runway. Bruno is fired, but he travels the world with his assistant and jumps from place to place in order to achieve some kind of fame.

Like I said, I didn't fall in love with Borat like the rest of the country, but I did admit that it was at times humorous. The execution isn't really that much different here (even the stories have similarities), but I think what gave the character Borat an edge was that he was a likable guy, in his own anti-Semitic way. He was crass, but always stored a humble personality that made his adventure have a reason to care. The problem with Bruno is that for all of the film he is a self-absorbed, arrogant jerk who's smug persona as personified by Cohen makes his tactics feel even more cheap, contrived and painfully aware of themselves than they were three years ago. Bruno is not the type of person that a movie is made for.

Cohen is a great comedian, I can recognize that, and I even liked his under appreciated, and somewhat forgotten, turn in Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd. He is generally good at taking characters and investing enough of a spirit in them to get invested. But here, he never lets Bruno settle down and humanize him. He is always making Bruno be on, and force feeding the people around him with so many over the top caricatures of the gay community. His intentions are to get people to admit their homophobia, but that is only when he pushes the boundaries so much that even the most tolerant and accepting of audiences would have to raise their voices. It is unclear where Cohen wants to take us with this character, but it is always in uncomfortable territory.

Larry Charles returns as director, and since then he's also directed Bill Maher's religious lampooning documentary Religulous. Here, the set up is pretty much the same, but the payoff isn't nearly as great. There are more and more moments that feel staged and then don't really have the value of good entertainment. When that fails, the film reverts to truly outrageous and gross out moments. Borat had one really funny scene in which Cohen and his short, stocky assistant wrestle with each other nude and extend it to the hotel lobby downstairs. Parts of that scene were probably fake, but there was a delivery about it that made it humorous (the extra long black bar on Borat for example). This film relies far too heavily on shock value, and includes far too many genital close-ups for my taste.

Maybe there was a good film here to start with, but it is not what is out in theaters right now. Instead, we have a rancid film that is ugly to the touch. There is no endearing center to this film; it is rotten and moldy right down to the core. It is offensive, vulgar, conceded, malicious and, most importantly, not funny. There are a few clever moments sprinkled in, but they are far too few to list off in great number. One that comes to mind would be an interview Bruno does with Ron Paul, trying to boost his fame by participating in a sex tape with the congressman. Paul walks out in a fiery passion, and it is generally funny. A little while later, I saw other people doing the same thing in my theatre. I wish I had followed suit for, at this moment, the worst film of the year. * / ****; GRADE: D