Bruno Review

NOTE: This review is a repost from the first Reel Money Site. It was placed here to be included in our new archives.

Bruno (2009)
Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen
Director: Larry Charles.
Writers: Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines

This is one of the few times I really wish I knew how to type the Umlaut.

Sacha Baron Cohen has made a career out of exposing people to themselves. In Borat, he created a character so bizarre and unusual that it angered people, only to show what people become when they don't understand something. For his role in Talledega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby, he got an entire crowd of NASCAR fans to boo the antagonist's car by having the announcer say it was French. They didn't even know they were part of a fictional movie. Cohen knows people, and how to push their buttons. He understands society more than many sociologists, and what he has to show us is disheartening, at times downright terrifying.

This time Cohen parades out one of his lesser known characters from the Ali G show, Austrian fashion show host Bruno, a flaming homosexual with a desire for fame. From the very first minutes of the movie, Cohen is outlandish as possible, making a public spectacle, and including a scene recreating various gay sex acts, as if to say "Hey, if you can't make it through the first ten minutes here, you're not prepared for this movie." There are a few amusing bits, and a many moments that not only toe the line of good taste, they obliterate the very notion such a line exists. I'm not a fan of being outrageous for outrage's sake, and I quickly got the feeling that this was what Bruno was spiraling into. The film plays like a series of sketches, each one trying to top the last in terms of controversy.The viewer finds themselves on the verge of leaving the theater, but staying in their seats to see what is going to happen next. Then, after a trip to the Middle East, the viewer starts waiting to see if Cohen is going to be killed.

Where the film shines, however, when Cohen takes a backseat and lets people be people, giving them outrageous situations and letting them react in ways that are both amusing and horrifying, and in one case involving showing what a parent is willing to put their baby through for a modeling job, downright sickening. The film makes a turnaround when Bruno decides to attempt to become straight, and Cohen takes us on a journey through the Deep South. Bruno meets with two gay-converting pastors, goes hunting, and attends a very awkward swingers party. The latter half of the film fills you with laughter, even if it is of the Oh-My-God-This-Is-Terrible-Why-Am-I-Laughing variety. In the end, the film is funny because these are real people, and occasionally Cohen ruins a possibly classic scene, by going too over-the-top and detracting from his own scene. That said, the films climax, a UFC  style cage match hosted by Bruno had me in stitches, and also genuinely frightened for the filmmaker.

This is probably the point Cohen is going for. Why was I more afraid during a scene featuring a bunch of Southern wrestling fans than I was the scene with a supposed terrorist leader? More importantly, why was I so afraid that the guy in the theater behind me was enjoying the film for all the wrong reasons? Taken as a documentary, Bruno is both hilarious and thought-provoking, akin to the works f Michael Moore. But when unfunny, unnecessary scenes of Bruno's flamboyancy get in the way, they detract from what would otherwise be one of the most raw, real, untapped looks at America society in cinema.

Final total: $15. The film would definitely be worth a second viewing from me, if only to catch anything I may have missed the first time. A DVD extra showing the moments when Cohen revealed himself to people might raise the price for me, but as is, two tickets is all this film is really worth.