Bruno Film Review
Sacha Baron Cohen Resurrects Borat Formula For Flamboyant Gay Shtick
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan was a searing, merciless satire of American xenophobia.
In Bruno – a sequel to Borat in approach, star and crew – it’s slightly less riotous and timely for Sacha Baron Cohen to take down notions of American masculinity or homophobia – paper targets so shredded they barely have a bullseye.
But that someone proud to call himself a “second-stage gay conversion specialist” exists in the evangelical world is sickening, as is his reductive, repugnant misogyny.
Where such scenarios become daringly, painfully funny – as they so often were in Borat – is the way in which Cohen calculatedly beats people like that conversion specialist at their own game.
Sacha Baron Cohen Brings Flamboyantly Gay Austrian Fashionista To Screen in Bruno
Made over to look a decade younger and far more Aryan (with a flat iron and highlights, natch), Cohen plays Bruno Gehard (phonetically, that’s “Gay-hard”).
Bruno is the beloved host of Funkyzeit mit Bruno (which translates to “Funky Time with Bruno”) – a, uh, pull-no-punches expose of the fashion and entertainment industries. With a hit TV show, universal access to celebrities and love with his diminutive boyfriend Diesel (Clifford Banagale), Bruno can’t lose.
But a disastrous stunt during Milan Fashion Week gets him canned from the show, and Bruno is, as he would say, “vas aus” (was out). Unable to accept defeat, Bruno takes his act to America – more specifically, California, which is a noticeable diamond rivet in a map of the United States resembling designer jeans.
Followed by his assistant’s assistant, Lutz (Gustaf Hammarsten) – who carries an unrequited romantic torch – Bruno makes his way through the ups and downs of American popular culture, sexuality, religion and, just maybe, redemption in a world where everyone’s famous for 15 minutes.
Mr. Gehard is no Borat Sagdiyev
Structured the same as Borat, Bruno finds Cohen shaking a stick in the cage of Southern religious conversion for reasons related to his sexuality. It’s there – as well as a scene when stage parents agree to increasingly horrible conditions for their kids – that you can feel the doing-business-as fronts working overtime.
To be fair, with the success of Borat, it was inevitable that people might recognize Cohen and find out more quickly they are the real butts of the joke. Thus, Bruno is far more overt about its use of actors – or, at the very least, paid personnel (in the case of the “Mexican furniture” scene or a visit to a swingers’ party that has one rather graphic hard-cut edit).
Plus, crashing the set of Medium – an NBC-produced show – feels brazenly synergistic in a film distributed by parent company Universal.
And Bruno, caustically riotous as he is, simply is not as sympathetic as Borat. There was a sweetness and naivete to Borat that can’t sink in for Bruno, so his comedy is crueler and colder to the point where the character’s heartbreak won’t fly.
For All Its Flaws, Though, Bruno is One of 2009’s Funniest Comedies
What Bruno might lack in setup innovation or character conviction, it makes up for with the stones to push things well past the point of comfort or, in some cases, personal safety.
Bruno likening himself to another Austrian “persecuted for trying something new” gets at the heart of the character’s megalomania. A visit to a real-life terrorist is fraught with ominous danger from the get-go, and that’s before Cohen refers to Osama bin Laden as “a dirty wizard or a homeless Santa Claus.”
Though the film contains nothing like the infamous Borat-Azamat naked-wrestling match, it does feature the most horrifying invocation possible of Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. And then there’s the finale – unfortunately spoiled in the press – that does turn violent and, in the process, hilariously spoofs a beloved love theme.
More staged spectacle than spontaneous satire, Bruno is still a successfully uproarious exercise in which Cohen slays U.S. social stratification.
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