CINEMA: Bruno

Highly anticipated, much-hyped and reviews were embargoed until the week of release.

So after all of this is, was it really worth it? Well yes and no. From the creative mind of Sacha Baron Cohen and director and Seinfeld writer Larry Charles comes Bruno. Played by Cohen, an overtly gay Austrian fashion show host who, after a disastrous incident during an important fashion show, is thrown out of the community he knows and loves and has to seek fame and fortune in America.

From the opening scenes where we see Bruno have disgustingly graphic sex with his pygmy boyfriend which caused the film to have an 18 certificate in the UK you know that this time around Cohen is out to shock and shame the audience far more than Borat ever did.

It follows almost exactly the same plot as Borat, as Bruno and his lovestruck assistant Lutz (Gustaf Hammarsten) take off for LA to find fame in any way possible and humiliate the American public and as many stupid celebrities as they can on the way. This format was hilarious the first time around for Cohen and made him a millionaire so why bother changing it?

It is a funny film there is no doubt and at times you find yourself mouth open in shock and occasionally shame at what is going on up on screen. It swerves from the sublime to the ridiculous with Bruno having his anus bleached while on the phone to his ultra-conservative LA talent agent, to an American mother being more than happy for her infant child to wear a Nazi uniform and get liposuction if it means they will be famous and on TV.

The jokes and situations come thick and fast in the first half of the film including a scene where Bruno tries to launch a new celebrity expose TV show which the focus group say “was worse than cancer”.

But by the third act, and Bruno’s acquisition of a black baby, the film begins to fall apart and has to simply resort to taking the piss out of rednecks: Bruno is “cured” of his gayness by a preacher; Bruno appears in a cage fight to prove that he has changed and is finally a “real man”.

Cohen and his supporting cast’s performances are all spot on, especially Hammarsten who is probably better than Cohen himself as Lutz, while it’s hard to tell whether the various celebrities who appear are in on the joke or simply to stupid to realise what is going on.

Yes, you will laugh out loud in places, and be shocked and appalled in others but hopefully Bruno marks the end of films and TV where we simply laugh at others’ views and ideas in the belief that we’re far superior.

Bruno go home and get back in your closet, darling.

Mark Cappuccio