Bruno Has Ways Of Making You Laugh
Written: Jul 11 '09 (Updated Jul 12 '09)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Funny as heck
Cons: Not a unified piece
The Bottom Line: A funny movie, no more or less.
|
|
|
| factotum's Full Review: Bruno |
Sacha Baron Cohen & Larry Charles' new film Bruno is already elciting a wide range of opinions. Some think it is just offensive, others find it simply funny and its critics uptight. The majority of observers seem to agree that it is both funny and offensive, but are split as to which it is more of. Some think it is thought provoking, others find it obvious. For my part, I laughed my head off at it while being a little disappointed to discover that it didn't quite add up to, ahem, the sum of its parts. The humor was as or more transgressive and shocking than Borat, amazingly, but the satire not as wickedly sharp. That said, whatever points the film did or did not make in terms of social commentary, it worked pretty well as a slapstick farce.
Bruno offers a series of hysterically funny scenes. Cohen does his usual masterful job staying in character as a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashion reporter interacting with a variety of both actors and unsuspecting dupes. If one interpets the intention of the film is to shine a light on Americans attitudes towards homosexuality, as seems to be one popular way of viewing it, I don't think it really works. People seem less offended by his homosexuality per se than by his utter lack of boundaries.
My sense, however, is that they are not the film's main target. Sure, homophobes--like the cage match fans in Arkansas who are duped into seeing Bruno perform as fight promoter Straight Dave or the gay minister who thinks homosexuality can, let alone should, be 'cured'--are tweaked and humiliated when they are encountered; but Cohen and director Charles seem to really have celebrity culture in their sights. We see parents who will stop at nothing to have their babies be featured in the media, as well as celebrity consultants who cluelessly advise Bruno how to exploit global tragedies to improve his image.
Mostly, though, the film just seems to be outrageous for its own sake. Unlike Borat, which really did seem to be a piece of guerrilla fieldwork exposing the savage heart of America, Bruno is a series of gleefully obscene vignettes that owes more to early John Waters than Jonathan Swift. The film's most notorious scene, in fact, seems an hommage to the cotortionist scene in Pink Flamingos.
I don't know whether or not Cohen set out to make a 'serious' film, that is to say a comedy with a political agenda. I do get the impression that the Bruno character was not consistently able to elicit the cooperation from his victims that made Cohen's ealier jaunts so revealing; no doubt Cohen's increased notoriety has made this type of spoof harder for him to pull off. My guess is that Bruno as it exists consists of a lot of pieces that were called as audibles when the original plans didn't quit pan out. The movie we get instead of what may have been envisioned is funny...ribaldly, hysterically so...but it doesn't quite come together. It's like a record with a bunch of great tunes as opposed to a classic album with a unified theme.
Bruno is not altogether coherent as a motion picture. It is not the triumph that Borat was. But it delivers more than your money's worth of laughs. Don't go expecting it to be as good as its predecessor, but go if you like Cohen and his brand of ambush humor. However, stay home if you are easily offended.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
factotum
|
 - Top 1000 |
|
Member: Edward Kane
Location: Long Beach, CA
Reviews written: 405
Trusted by: 115 members
About Me:
All is well...all is well....
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.