Reviews: Bruno
July 10, 2009 by admin
Filed under Movie News
Reviews 1: Bruno
The crown of the reigning king of bad taste must pass from John Waters to Sacha Baron Cohen. After Borat he pushes the envelope even further in Brüno with frontal nudity, graphic sex and Nazi jokes and much worse besides. It’s gross, offensive and puerile in equal measure—but it is impossible not to laugh while you wince and recoil. Prospects, despite the R rating (for pervasive strong and crude sexual content, graphic nudity and language), must be rosy.
The pattern is the same as Borat, except this time Sacha Baron Cohen has created for himself a gay Austrian fashionista who sets off the States with his trusty German assistant to become, in his words, “the biggest gay movie star since Schwarzenegger.”
He finds himself at a loose end after he’s fired from his Austrian television show because he brought the house down, almost literally, when his Velcro outfit created a major incident at a fashion show in Milan.
So what does he get up to in Hollywood? He hosts a TV talk show with guests Paula Abdul and LaToya Jackson, who take to their heels after being served sushi from the body of a naked Mexican. There is a half-hearted attempt to go straight “just like Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Kevin Spacey.” And he calls in a focus group to give their verdicts on a television show he has produced which is totally disgusting.
At one point he becomes chained to his assistant for a bit of bondage and then they try to board a bus—naked and unashamed. There’s a wrestling match in a cave and a swingers’ party that swings in unexpected directions. He tries to seduce Ron Paul, the former Presidential candidate, and there’s a hilarious scene when, acting as the producer of a film, he tells the proud parents of a prospective cast member that their son would be expected to dress as a Nazi and push a wheelbarrow into an oven. Its contents are a Jewish baby. The mother’s unrepentant response is: “That’s fine as long as he gets the gig.”
Much of the fun is to be derived from watching the consternation and reaction of those who are not in on the joke—but after Borat it’s clear many people are wiser and the makers may have had to work harder to spring the surprises.
Its crisp running time ensures that not a second feels labored, and there’s barely enough time to recover from one assault on the senses before another comes along to take your breath away.
Some audiences will embrace it all with a venom, others may shrink from the vulgarity—but whatever your persuasion, a smirk of some kind seems certain to appear from nowhere despite yourself and your better nature. The answer is probably to let it all hang out: our Sacha certainly does.
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Richard Bey, Ron Paul, Paula Abdul, Domiziano Arcangeli, Emerson Brooks and Alice Evans
Director: Larry Charles
Screenwriters: Sacha Baron Cohen, Dan Mazer, Jeff Schaffer and Anthony Hines
Producers: Monica Levinson, Dan Mazer, Jay Roach and Sacha Baron Cohen
Genre: Comedy
Rating: R for pervasive strong and crude sexual content, graphic nudity and language.
Running time: 83 min.
Release date: July 10, 2009
Reviews 2: Bruno
There are 61 laughs, three dildos, one gyrating, talking penis, an anal bleaching and one very pissed-off politician in “Bruno,” which should be enough to make any movie fly. But there is also a pronounced nasty streak to the innumerable provocations staged by the title character that curdles the laughs and wears out the flamboyant Austrian fashionista’s welcome within the picture’s brief 82-minute running time. Undeniably funny, outrageous and boundary-pushing, this further documentation of Sacha Baron Cohen’s sheer nerve will draw an abundant share of “Borat” fans, gross-out seekers and the culturally curious, making for some potent B.O. figures, at least at first. But the content will turn off some (no doubt including some gays), as will the sourness and ill will triggered by the picture’s cumulative misanthropy.
“Borat” scored its sensation not only due to its comedic audacity and Cohen’s sangfroid, but because it convincingly presented ordinary people’s reactions to the star’s myriad incitements. Even though the format is similar here, with Bruno appearing in unlikely places to surprise the unsuspecting, the suspicion persists that most of the sequences were staged, with the majority of the participants in on the gag or even portrayed by actors.
Whatever the actual breakdown of “real” versus elaborately faked scenes under director Larry Charles’ guidance, the result feels far more scripted and narratively driven than did “Borat,” which also benefited from a more unique and cleverly conceived central character. Bruno is a striver, the latest incarnation of a country bumpkin drawn to Hollywood to become a star; the twist is that, unlike many of his predecessors, he’s far from innocent and relentlessly tweaks the establishment’s political correctness with a straight face — the only straight thing about him.
Showing off his leaner and toned body in a series of often comically absurd costumes, the brown-and-blond-coiffed Bruno is introduced as the star of a Euro TV fashion show, “Funkyzeit.” After crashing a runway presentation, however, Bruno is “schwartzlisted,” which frees him to go to Los Angeles to pursue his dream of becoming “the biggest Austrian superstar since Hitler.”
The film and the character lay their sexual cards on the table in a dizzying montage of carnal permutations practiced by Bruno and his diminutive Asian boytoy, setting the tone for subsequent bawdiness that pushes the proverbial envelope while suggesting plenty got left in the Avid delete queue. Once in Hollywood, he attempts to launch a celebrity interview show, one on which he proclaims his cultural sensitivity by replacing the furniture with down-on-all-fours Mexicans and having initial guests Paula Abdul and La Toya Jackson sit on them. (In light of Michael Jackson’s death, Universal has opted to remove the footage of La Toya Jackson, which includes a scene of Bruno trying to get the King of Pop’s phone number.) One undoubtedly “real” moment has Bruno stalking Harrison Ford and being angrily told by the star to buzz off, in rather less decorous terms.
Pic takes a fateful turn toward the queasy, from which it never entirely recovers, with a noxious “Gotcha!” sequence in which Ron Paul, the libertarian-minded recent presidential aspirant, is played for a sap. Charitably willing to sit for an interview, the clearly clueless politico is led into a bedroom, upon which Bruno begins stripping as if in preparation for a tryst. When Paul realizes he’s been set up, he storms out and furiously calls his captor a “queer” a couple of times, which will no doubt rankle some of his erstwhile supporters. But his epithets arguably pale in comparison with the venality of his predator’s arachnidan motives.
Absent this interlude, the film might have blithely proceeded on its merry way. As it is, the humor — and it keeps on coming — carries with it an almost immediate sour aftertaste, as Bruno’s intentions, and necessarily Cohen’s along with them, appear far from honorable. As in “Borat,” “Bruno’s” pranks are designed to expose people’s presumed latent prejudices. But while the previous film got away with this high-wire act for most people, “Bruno” is more erratic, partly since one is more aware of the game being rigged but also because Bruno himself comes off as someone the world scarcely needs another example of — a self-absorbed narcissist for whom fame is the only goal. Cohen is critiquing this attitude, of course, but the film comes to share too much of this anything-for-effect mindset.
That said, there are numerous jaw-dropping sequences: Bruno’s deliberately incendiary interviews with Israelis and radical Palestinians (real? Who knows?); his Madonna- and Angelina-inspired adoption of a black African baby and subsequent taunting appearance before an all-black TV studio audience; his attempt to undergo a “gay cure” through counseling and then via macho martial-arts training; a pretty amazing visit to a blue-collar swingers’ party; and, finally, his goading a mangy, beer-swilling Arkansas crowd into an anti-gay frenzy at a cage wrestling extravaganza. Real? Once again, who knows?
Pic is of a noticeably higher technical quality than “Borat,” which may not be an advantage in terms of credibility.
More than one option
* (Person) Michael Jackson
Song, Song Performer, Video
* (Person) Michael Jackson
Actor
* (Person) Mike Jackson
* (Person) Michael Jackson
* (Person) Michael Jackson
* (Person) Michael Jackson
Assistant Production Coordinator, Camera Operator, Lighting
* (Person) Michael Jackson
Actor, Song, Song Performer
* (Person) Michael Jackson
* (Person) Michael Jackson
* (Person) Michael Jackson
Actor
* (Person) Michael Jackson
Actor
* (Person) Michael Jackson
More than one option
* (Person) Ron Paul
Assistant Director, Stage Manager
* (Person) Ron Paul
Actor
Camera (Deluxe color, HD), Anthony Hardwick, Wolfgang Held; editors, James Thomas, Scott M. Davids; music, Erran Baron Cohen; music supervisor, Richard Henderson; art directors, Denise Hudson, David Saenz de Maturana, Lisa Marinaccio; set decorators, Ute Bergk, Britt Woods; costume designer, Jason Alper; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS), Scott Harber; supervising sound editor, Michael O�Farrell; re-recording mixers, Gary A. Rizzo, Brandon Proctor; visual effects supervisor, Scott Davids; visual effects, Level 256; makeup and hair, Thomas Kolarek; stunt coordinator, Alex Daniels; associate producers, Alper, Peter Baynham, Jonah Hill, Schaffer, Dale Stern; assistant director, Stern; casting, Allison Jones. Reviewed at Chinese 6, Los Angeles, June 22, 2009. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 82 MIN.
With: Paula Abdul, La Toya Jackson, Harrison Ford, Ron Paul, Bono, Chris Martin, Elton John, Slash, Snoop Dogg, Sting.
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Reviews 3: Bruno
“Bruno” is a no-holds-barred comedy permitting several holds I had not dreamed of. The needle on my internal Laugh Meter went haywire, bouncing among hilarity, appreciation, shock, admiration, disgust, disbelief and appalled incredulity. Here is a film that is 82 minutes long and doesn’t contain 30 boring seconds. There should be a brief segment at the next Spirit Awards with John Waters conferring the Knighthood of Bad Taste to Sacha Baron Cohen. If he decides to tap Cohen on each shoulder with his sword, I want to have my eyes closed.
To describe Cohen’s character Bruno as flamboyantly gay would be an understatement. He makes Bruce Vilanch seem like Mike Ditka. Bruno is disgraced in his native Austria when he wears a Velcro suit to Fashion Week and sticks to backdrops, curtains and models. It’s slapstick worthy of Jerry Lewis. Then he flies to Los Angeles with Lutz (Gustaf Hammarsten), his loyal worshipper, vowing to become a celebrity.
As in his 2006 hit “Borat,” Cohen places his character into situations involving targets who may not be in on the joke, and have never heard of Bruno or, for that matter, Sacha Baron Cohen. Some of the situations may be set up with actors, but most are manifestly the real thing. I include an interview in which Bruno lures Rep. Ron Paul into a hotel room, his appearance on a Dallas TV morning show, the screening of a TV pilot before a focus group, counseling with two Alabama ministers dedicated to “curing” homosexuals and a gay wrestling match before a crowd that is dangerously real.
The setups include an interview with Paula Abdul and originally included one with LaToya Jackson, which was cut because of her brother’s death. That accounts for the running time being three minutes shorter that at the movie’s London opening. I also believe those are real parents at interviews trying to get their babies hired for a proposed film — mothers who say their babies are ready to work with pyrotechnics, dress as Nazis or be strapped to a cross. These moms want their babies to be stars.
One incredible scene involves a darling little black boy who Bruno claims to have adopted in Africa. He appears with this child on “The Richard Bey Show” in Dallas, before a manifestly real, outraged and all-black studio audience. The host is indeed Richard Bey, but I suspect he was in on the gag. I learn that the audience wasn’t.
Certainly it take sheer nerve for Cohen to walk into some of these situations, knowing he’ll only get one take — if he’s lucky. Bruno plays an allegedly gay-hating straight wrestler in a scene promising gay bashing, and then shows the two men in the cage getting turned on as they grapple. There is also an eerie tension in a scene where Bruno, the gay new hunter, sits around a campfire with macho hunters who are very, very silent.
It is no doubt unfair of Cohen to victimize a perfectly nice man like Ron Paul. Watching Paul politely trying to deal with this weirdo made me reflect that as a fringe candidate, he has probably been subjected to a lot of strange questions on strange TV shows and probably is prepared to sit through almost anything for TV exposure. However, he has made a lot of intolerant comments about homosexuals, so by shouting “queer!” as he stalks out along a hotel corridor, he lost his chance of making amends. Helpful rule: If you find you have been the subject of a TV ambush, the camera is probably still rolling.
The movie is directed by Larry Charles, who in “Borat,” Bill Maher’s “Religulous” and his TV series “Curb Your Enthusiasm” has specialized in public embarrassment. Come to think of it, this may explain his outstandingly awful feature film debut, the Bob Dylan vehicle “Masked and Anonymous” (2003). In that one, stars like Jeff Bridges, Penelope Cruz, Angela Bassett, John Goodman, Val Kilmer and Luke Wilson appeared as straight men while Dylan as Jack Fate occasionally deigned to utter brief and enigmatic proverbs. Maybe they were told, ha-ha, they were going to appear in a real movie.
Reviews 4: Bruno
Like many other dangerous and controversial comedians (Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, Howard Stern), the role-playing guerrilla satirist Sacha Baron Cohen knows how to draw an audience into a conspiratorial relationship with him — and then make you squirm anyway. Brüno, his new quasi-documentary stunt comedy, is, if anything, a crazier, funnier, and even pricklier pincushion of a movie than Borat, his 2006 tweak of all things dumb, bigoted, and American. Teaming up again with director Larry Charles, Baron Cohen once more wanders the U.S. landscape in the put-on guise of an egomaniacally doltish yet weirdly resonant pest. This time he’s Brüno, a cretinous and very, very gay Austrian fashion-celebrity-fame whore in skintight hot pants and a frosted mop of Eurotrash hair that spills over his forehead like the tail of a dead squirrel.
Brüno, who refers to himself in the third person, has an imperious, nostril-flaring air; he’s the fashionista as commandant. After he gets kicked off of Funkyzeit, the discofied TV bash he hosts in Austria, he says that ”Brüno was blacklisted,” substituting a Teutonic racial slur for ”black.” Brüno, let’s be clear, is not a film that behaves itself, even for an ”enlightened” audience. You can’t squeeze it into a tidy liberal box, because it’s only too happy to flirt with the taboos and frat-house intolerances it’s ridiculing.
As Brüno travels across America and, at moments, visits other parts of the world, he has one compulsion — to become famous — and he’ll achieve it in any way possible. He starts off by trying to meet celebrities, with little success (he gets a ”F— off!” from Harrison Ford). On a Dallas talk show, he parades his adopted black baby, which nearly touches off a riot. The scene is a vicious skewer of stars who turn adopted kids into accessories, yet the real joke is that it doesn’t take long for a talk show devoted to ”compassion” to tease out the pitchfork-mob rage of the studio audience. For a while, Brüno, taking a cue from Hollywood, pretends to be straight. He goes to a party for swingers, in a scene so bizarre you’ll think, It can’t be fake. He also attends a gay ”deprogramming” session with an evangelical therapist who looks, let’s just say, a little bit less than qualified.
The more uncomfortable Brüno makes people, the more he draws attention to their petty churlishness and homophobia. When he ambushes the maverick politician Ron Paul with a go-go dance, you can forgive a visibly shaken Paul for thinking Brüno is nuts — though that’s hardly an excuse for calling him ”queer.” Yet is Brüno the scurrilous man-tramp himself a homophobic caricature? My honest answer is: yes and no. Baron Cohen’s portrayal certainly feeds into a stereotype of haughty flamboyance. But if one condemns the movie on that basis, then shouldn’t we toss Christopher Guest’s sublime turn in Waiting for Guffman, Robin Williams’ inspired camping in The Birdcage, and so many others onto the bonfire, too? The bottom line is that Baron Cohen, even at his most scathing, makes Brüno gleefully unapologetic about who he is.
Brüno is no comedy of hate, though it does mock any hint of piety by pushing Brüno’s in-your-face sexuality…well, in our faces. The movie piles on gags about outré bedroom devices and butt bleaching, and when Brüno pays a visit to a psychic, he tries to bridge the spirit world by miming oral sex (and that’s putting it mildly). The psychic’s reaction isn’t all that funny; mostly, he’s just stoically embarrassed. But that’s because Baron Cohen is really goofing on us, exploiting the audience’s squeamish sexual anxiety only to explode it. Far more than in Borat, he holds a fun-house mirror up to our hidden prejudices, too.
The entire film is in seriously questionable taste, and there will, of course, be debates about what’s staged and what’s not. Those looking for purity in satire should stay away. Yet there’s a vision at work in Brüno — the movie is a toxic dart aimed at the spangly new heart of American hypocrisy: our fake-tolerant, fake-charitable, fake-liberated-yet-still madly-closeted fame culture. Brüno ends on a note of scandalously funny out-and-proud triumph, and that’s because Sacha Baron Cohen never makes a plea for tolerance. He tosses a grenade for tolerance. A–
Reviews 5: Bruno
Packed with filthy jokes, insane sight gags, and body parts used in decidedly uncommon ways, “Brüno” is hands-down the dirtiest R-rated movie you’ll see this year. Only you know if that’s reason to run to the nearest multiplex.
With fewer moments of spontaneous madness, the latest double-dare from Sacha Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles doesn’t offer the outrageous highs of “Da Ali G Show,” the tv series that inspired it, or “Borat,” the movie that preceded it. But while Cohen’s samurai satire has lost some of its edge, he can still leave audiences howling – when they’re not gasping in disbelief.
Brüno, for those who never watched Cohen’s HBO show, is his Austrian alter ego, an absurdly flamboyant fashionista with more ambition than brain power. After an unfortunate catwalk incident, he heads to Hollywood to become an American superstar. He doesn’t have much of a plan, but then, Cohen doesn’t seem to, either.
Like “Borat,” the movie is a blend of candid-camera moments and scripted sketches. Some fall flat (the adopted baby bit is funnier in the trailer), many are amusing (oh, Paula Abdul), and a few feel downright inspired (if Cohen ever gets bored, he’s got a promising future as a Middle East envoy).
“Borat” came out at a time when immigration anxiety was at its peak, and Cohen deftly used his fumbling foreigner to unmask all manner of hypocrisy and prejudice. “Brüno” is similarly well-timed, given the contemporary debate over gay rights, and the best scenes remind us how provocative he can be. It’s a safe bet that neither L.A. stage parents nor Southern wrestling fans will recover quickly from his assaults.
Unfortunately, though, Cohen can no longer fool the average moron, and his written material lacks the danger of his fearless improvisation. And the final sequence – in which he proves his own star power without earning any laughs – finds him flirting with the sort of celebrity self-indulgence he’s spent much of the movie spoofing.
That said, when he hits, he hits hard. So here’s hoping he resists the twinkling lure of fame, which has seduced men far better than Brüno.
