Brüno Movie Reviews
Posted by Adam
Sacha Baron Cohen‘s eagerly-awaited Brüno hit movie theaters Friday.
I’ve seen it. It was funny — but not as funny as I thought it would be.
But what do the “real” critics think? Find out after the jump!
Assuming outlandish guises, gulling the gullible and piling on the transgressive jokes, including plenty of gay-panic-inducing antics, is Sacha Baron Cohen’s shtick. Well, the shtick is getting a bit short, already.
The result, directed once again by Larry Charles and co-scripted by Cohen, is like an Austin Powers movie without the characters, plot or story line. That’ll be 10 bucks, sucker.
It should be noted that Mr. Baron Cohen remains a brilliant slapstick artist and a master of voices — Brüno’s mock-German and scrambled American idioms are in some ways even more crazily spot-on than Borat’s gibberish — and a performer of no small discipline and physical courage. He is able to stay in character even, for example, when a naked woman is flogging him with a belt. But in spite of Mr. Baron Cohen and Mr. Charles’s high-level skills and keen low-comic instincts, “Brüno” is a lazy piece of work that panders more than it provokes.
The episodic plot — Brüno comes to America with a sidekick from home (Gustaf Hammarsten), seeks fortune and fame, encounters humiliations to which he is obdurately immune and achieves a redemption of sorts — is a photocopy of “Borat.” Like a thrift-store outfit “Brüno” is an ensemble of borrowings, mostly from wittier, more inventive movies. The vacuity of the fashion world was skewered to zanier effect in “Zoolander,” and “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” remains the definitive exploration of the collision between Teutonic sexuality and American mores.
What “Brüno” tries hardest to be, and fails most significantly to become, is a sendup of the empty vanity of celebrity culture. Brüno, in his quest for stardom, encounters and exploits bottom feeders, hangers-on and desperate aspirants for membership in the charmed circle of fame. “Will you look at those dumb losers” is the punch line here, and it sometimes elicits a spasm of shocked laughter.
CNN:
Perhaps inspired by another Cohen creation, Ali G, he sets out to make a celebrity interview show — but sadly, the only dupes ignorant enough to participate are American Idol judges and presidential candidates [Ron Paul is inadvertently cast in a sex tape].
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 Bruno — 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. Bruno ends on a note of scandalously funny out-and-proud triumph.
Will you be seeing Brüno?
Tags: sacha baron cohen
