Bruno: Review By B. Alan Orange

This is one of those effortlessly watchable experiences that completely takes you out of your chair and transports you past the screen. Some of the things being shown are quite unbelievable, and you’ll wonder how star Sasha Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles got away with it. Some folks will be offended beyond their own beliefs as a human being. There’s no denying that the material could be described as Queerface. It certainly strikes that chord, going beyond human nature to plunge the character of Bruno into unreachable depths of absurdity. Yet, this over-chalked caricature does exist in the real world. Problem is, the guy wearing the diaper and excessive shimmery blue eye shadow, marching down the street in support of Prop 8, isn’t in on the joke. That’s where Cohen can’t beat the rap. To some, he’ll seem as odious and grating as Ted Danson in blackface. It’s the taboo double standard. If you’re inclined to support and function within a particular affect, its natural. If you are outside that realm, and you step into it, its offensive mockery no matter the social commentary held within its obvious framework. If Cohen were a homosexual, this material would still be shockingly inappropriate. Thing is, different folks would be offended by different jokes. And that’s the way the worm turns.

Bruno is about two things: The cult of celebrity and our inherent intolerance towards the homosexual lifestyle. Cohen and Charles nail the first conceit on the head with stunning clarity. The second, not so much. They go at exposing heterosexual fears with a thorny rose bush up the anus. Imagine trying to change the mindset of a racist white power junky hell bent on supremacy. Would you slather grease on the face of a velvet tracksuit wearing, chicken eating, watermelon sucking, indolent jigaboo jive-talking stereotype to make your point? No. It would only drive his idealistic race mongering lifestyle home, and make that white supremacist more dominate and indulgent in his unshaken beliefs of a higher, segregated world order. Bruno excels at doing this exact thing. He takes an over-the-top, effectual fey cartoon and uses it to expose certain prejudices and homophobic fears amongst the straight community. In watching people react to his shenanigans, one does not totally condemn the targeted misanthrope for his (or her) blatant ignorance. Nearly every encounter is non-reflective of the homosexual population at large. These seemingly unsuspecting victims are reacting to this loud, glossy hyper-beast prying upon their goodwill. Their repulsion has little to do with the lifestyle he seemingly represents.

The film fails in exposing a hotbed of homophobia amongst its prey. It chases easy targets, and provokes expected responses from predictable archetypes. Poke someone in the eye with a burning stick, and they’re sure to jump. Good ol’ boy hunters, redneck fight enthusiasts, and military drill sergeants are bound to react in funny and frightening ways when confronted with a banal, sycophant like Bruno. Most of these guys are (surprisingly) quite tolerant of his behavior. In the case of the Army reservists, they actually seem to be having a lot of fun with him. The Bruno character is like a heavy, warm blanket that wants too smother you. Stick this guy with any group of campers, and have him try to crawl into a tent, naked, numerous times; you’re sure to get a similar response. Even amongst a group of gay men. Sure, it’s funny to watch the poor victim scream, “F*ck you!” Then slap the cameraman. But he seems more congenial and pleasant than many gay folks I know. This is Carnival Theory taken to its most heightened, human degree. If you invited a bunch of Prop 8 supporting straight hipsters to a Man-slammin’ cage fight only to have it turn into a male-on-male grope session, I’d argue that you’d get a response similar to what we see here. Add to that the manipulation of editing, and inserted acting, and this could be as ineffectual and intelligently provocative as an Oliver Stone movie.

Walking away from Bruno, you may be overwhelmed by its aggressive stance on stupidity. It’ll do little to change your views on communal bigotry. There are no unknown truths revealed for the greater good. The two individuals that come off looking the worst are Paula Abdul, who gives some inappropriate humanitarian advice while sitting on a less than appropriate chair. And a mother who will do anything (and I do mean anything) to get her baby hired for a photo shoot. All that said, one still can’t deny Bruno’s place in cinematic history. It is the most consistently funny film of this year. Or any year for that matter. It’s inappropriate, oversimplified buffoonery that attacks moral issues in a unique and interesting way, in spite of the derogatory and over-the-top fire dancing done by its protagonist.

Bruno was always the least interesting, and least funny segment of the Ali G show. The character went beyond satire, and was almost too realistic in its depiction of gay culture and the fashion world. The jokes weren’t as edgy or unexpected as the material being doled out by Ali G and Borat. Maybe because we could see an exacting facsimile of those situations on E!’s sister channel Style Television. The Bruno segment would arrive late in the show, and it always felt like filler. With this film, Cohen has found away to make the character just as socially inept as Borat, and works from a similar palate in reaching the grandiose nature of his previous work.

Cohen’s first film "Ali G: In Da House" was a straightforward comedy that worked within a stale sitcom plot. It bucked real, living interactions with people for a traditional three-act beat structure. In turn, it looked as tired and as used as any TV-to-film adaptation ever has. It hardly pulled focus towards Cohen as a comedic mastermind. Despite In Da House being produced and released through Universal Pictures, the movie failed to reach these shores for quite some time, and it wasn’t given a proper U.S. DVD release until the success of Borat sparked an interest in everything related to the actor. With that initial film failing to strike a chord, Cohen’s next project, Borat, stuck to the more traditional pacing of the show from which it was sprung. It was made almost entirely of one-on-one interactions with unsuspecting Americans. Now, with Bruno, Cohen and Charles have mashed the two concepts together, creating something that is equal parts scripted narrative and unscripted realism. It’s sometimes hard to pinpoint where the fake ends and the real begins. But it’s easy to estimate how much was manipulated for the finished joke: All of it.

The story, as it were, finds Bruno being jailed for a runway mishap that we’ve all since heard about in the news. The footage is real, but the following comeuppance is not. Because of his obnoxious behavior, Bruno is fired from his gig as an Austrian Fashion Show host. To account for this loss, he flies off to California in search of fame and fortune. Looking deep into the reality of the situation, he decides to try on many different hats in his hunt for unobtainable glory. There is a love story that ends in almost identical fashion to what we saw Borat go through; only this harrowing tale is supported by a much stronger through-line. We see celebrities harangued, we see unbelievable sex acts, and we see quite a bit of penis. Not to mention Harrison Ford gets the biggest laugh in the entire film. At Bruno’s expense. Hate the movie all you want, you’ve got to love that.

To say anymore would be to ruin some of the shocking surprises that are in store for the willing viewer. Some are classic. There’s no doubt about that. This isn’t tepid, harmless junk. It defies our expectations and takes us beyond anything we’ve seen in an R rated movie before. It stops just short of sh*tting c*m on the sidewalk and throwing puppies off an overpass into oncoming traffic. It’s the next step in the evolution of shock cinema. Its saving grace is that it’s gut-wrenchingly hilarious throughout its tight 80 minute runtime. Some people will be offended. Some people will leave the theater after the first ten minutes. And some people will want to place it on a pedestal, claiming it’s the greatest comedic achievement of the past thirty years. How ever you color the awful thing, Bruno? It gets a big Whoop-doo!

(All of B. Alan Orange’s reviews are based on the Boo! or Whoop-doo! evaluation system.)