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Big screen BRÜNO doesn't translate
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Cohen seems to be pondering how can he offend more people with his next project.
It’s a challenge to find just the right adjective to concisely describe Brüno. Sophomoric, misanthropic, sexist, racist, homophobic and misogynistic all come to mind. The film, if you can call it that, traces Sacha Baron Cohen’s alter ego from his fall from grace as a sub-D-List Austrian fashionista through an obsessive quest to regain some vestige of celebrity and is, at best, an exercise in puerile banality. Casting aside all social sensitivities, Brüno’s most egregious crime is that it is simply not funny.
The blend of narrative and mockumentary forms leaves you on uncertain ground. Is it a comedy? A gay romance? Or is it reality TV thrown up - literally - on the big screen? Baron Cohen seems to want to wallow in the worst humanity has to offer with his transparently bad attempts to replicate the vérité style that gave Borat at least a mild level of interest. Making Paula Abdul look ridiculous during a faux interview by using migrant workers as furniture and buffet platters serves no purpose except to humiliate, and for no good reason. Isn’t American Idol enough punishment for her? Setting up similar punkings of Congressman Ron Paul or Middle East politicians covers similar ground with, if it’s possible, diminishing returns. Candid Camera and its successors worked as comedy because ultimately most everyone shared in the laugh. Here you are left with Ron Paul stomping off yelling “queer” before jump-cutting to the next abysmal sequence.
For the queers, this writer included, Bruno makes camp a four-letter word. Mincing queens can be hysterical – even to gay audiences – when they are well-written or well-acted and when there is a reason for their presence beyond being the butt of someone else’s joke. In Brüno there are no jokes, no humor and there is scant humanity, be it straight or gay. Throughout the film several appalling sequences of hyper-exaggerated gay sex acts serve no purpose except to elicit nervous titters from juiced-up frat boys and grossed-out gagging from their girlfriends. This demographic will likely be this film’s core audience.
Over the top scenes involving Brüno’s diminutive Asian assistant/boyfriend and a champagne bottle (amongst other devices), his assistant’s assistant Lutz, and oral/anal copulation with the ghost of Milli Vanilli’s Rob Pilatus – not to mention the close-up of a bouncing, Brazilian-waxed penis that shouts “Brüno!” – serve only to demean.
Heterosexuals fare no better. At one point Brüno decides that going straight is the answer. The pasty fundamentalist conversion counselor, a gap-toothed self-defense instructor who teaches Brüno how to fend off attacking dildos, some redneck hunters and a group of sleazy swingers are Baron Cohen’s choice of role models. In one unintentionally satisfying moment, a silicone-melon endowed white trash dominatrix at the swinger party verbally abuses Brüno while simultaneously beating the crap out of him with a belt. Every audience member subjected to this self-indulgent piece of celluloid masturbation should be given the option to get a few licks in as well.
If there is anything salvageable out of this shallow, mean-spirited 83-minute ordeal it is the performance of Gustaf Hammarsten as Lutz. Lutz loves Brüno in spite of every taunt, abuse and humiliation. He stands steadfast through Brüno’s decline and (relatively short) fall from fame and expends every resource at his command to help his beloved regain some myopically perceived former glory. In less capable hands, this doormat role would quickly fade from memory. In Hammarsten, a Swedish stage, film and television actor, Lutz is unglamorous, unselfconscious, unconditional love. It’s as if he were imported from another, much better, film. Towards the end, when he mistakenly thinks that his affections have finally been returned instead of returned to sender by Brüno’s cruelly shallow rebuke, the hurt is palpable. If only he’d stayed away for good. Then the film might have ended where it should – with Brüno wallowing in a pool of his own narcissistic psychic excrement – instead of the ridiculous wrestling cage reconciliation that kept this DOA schlockfest on life support for 20 more excruciating minutes.
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