Bruno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in...

...a Mesh T-Shirt

If only that were the real title.

So I belong to an intellectual elite of people who consider Borat a modern comic masterpiece. Also, I'm a huge fan of Da Ali G Show and Sacha Baron Cohen in general. How many other entertainers are willing to put their life on the line or go to any of the extremes he does for their art? Not many. And how many of these people turn out to be using these elaborate schemes to veil their lack of talent? Many.

It thus disheartens me to say that Bruno is something of a disappointment. Not that it isn't funny, for I laughed many times. More times, in fact, than many recent comedies. But it doesn't work as a film. But, as always, I'm getting ahead of myself.

For those of you who don't know, Bruno is a character that Sacha Baron Cohen used on Da Ali G Show, the same show that gave birth to the Borat character. Bruno is a homosexual Austrian fashion expert whose main purpose as a satire is to lampoon homophobes and the vanity of the fashion world.

That's a very specific vein to spike, unlike in Borat where the target of the satire was simply "America's differing attitudes towards foreigners". While there's an incredibly deep well to draw from there with shocking revelations of how Cohen can get these people to act, Bruno is a far shallower character.

Any half-way intelligent person already knows that homophobes are stupid and that the fashion industry is completely vacuous and self-important, so nothing is revelatory. Mostly Cohen winds people up for the sake of winding them up, and it makes the whole act completely transparent.

At the same time, people have much less patience for a flamboyant fashionista that offends them at every turn than for a loveabley confused foreigner who doesn't seem to grasp the niceties of western culture. And I mean a LOT less patience. It's actually the film's biggest problem. None of the situations last long enough to make an impact and none of the things he manages to get out of the people he's talking to are very good. They don't reveal anything to this character because they don't trust him and he's simply an offensive stereotype. For instance, there's a scene where Bruno interviews a real, live terrorist, but the scene ends far too soon when the terrorist becomes offended.

But this scene is a perfect description of everything that is good and bad about this film, so let's take a look at it.



That scene lasts forty seconds. In it, Cohen manages to make one joke. And it's a very funny joke, but he doesn't get anything out of the terrorist. The terrorist merely becomes offended and kicks him out. It actually smells like failure. Performing this style of guerrilla comedy, you want reactions out of the people you're interviewing, and when you don't get a reaction, you've failed. Essentially this whole movie is Sacha Baron Cohen being funny, but no one else going along for the ride.

It's a shame because Cohen is clearly giving it his all, but the Bruno character just doesn't work as well as the Borat character.

Cohen could have great luck as a serious actor or as a comic actor. I really hope for the best for him, but I think that this sort of film is over. I don't think it will ever work as well as Borat, and while Bruno is a nice effort, it simply doesn't work. It can't work.

5/10