It’s shocking, but it should have moments to make anyone laugh.
Whether you enjoy making fun of gays, rednecks, Latinos, Europeans, talk show audience members of color, celebrities or the fashion industry elite, the flamboyant Austrian Bruno will help you perpetuate some sort of stereotype or another.
Somehow Bruno, the latest celebration of Sacha Baron Cohen’s perverted love for the male body, has been labeled a feature film and is making millions at the box office. You may see more of his physique than you want, but even more repulsive than the full screen phallus are the parents at a casting selection for a photo session with Bruno’s baby, O.J. Their encouragement of Bruno’s disregard for their children’s’ safety and well being just to get a child a moment of stardom will truly shock the audience in a way the sexual pranks do not.
Cohen shows he’s after more than shock value though as he conducts a top-notch interview with Harrison Ford and later brokers a historic peace accord between Jews and Palestines (yeah right). Somehow Cohen does manage to get Paula Abdul to sit down for an interview—on the back of a Latino laborer. All is going well until one of the hired Hispanics is rolled out on a table with some sushi on his portly body, one of the more humorous moments of the film. How can anything match the ridiculousness of this situation? Well, there is a pretty awkward hunting trip with some very not gay gentlemen.
Awkward, more than any other word, describes the film, but its realness refreshingly sets it apart from the standard and comfortable Hollywood cookie cutter comedies. Ron Paul seemed far from comfortable when Bruno mistakes him for Ru Paul and invites him to make a sex tape.
While way past the boundaries of what is safe, comfortable and in good taste, I imagine this film would still garner more laughs from me than most any so-called comedy release of late. Still, Bruno’s Eastern European brother Borat is a very hard act to follow, and it seems the more recent film sees Cohen drift closer to shock and farther from creativity.
