The Horror

I was so excited to see Sasha Baron Cohen’s latest venture, Bruno. Cohen is a real daredevil of comedy, an innovator in an era of stale comedic dead-ends and tired, same-ol’ jokes. I thought, “oh, what will he come up with next? How crazy will this next film be?” Poor me. Poor millions of Americans who rushed to the theaters to be a part of this nearly era-defining comedy regime.

The regime has ended. I am sad to say that Bruno was the most pointless, stupid, obscene, pornographic film I have seen in a looong time. I have no idea how this could be rated only R and not even NC-17. Now, I’m no prude. In fact, I think I have lower morality standards than most when it comes to comedy. (Just kidding, almost) But this outright offended me. So much nudity and sex, like legit porn sex with little black boxes just covering enough to be shown in theaters. And okay, I know Borat  didn’t have a plot, per se, but there was the whole quest of Borat, and he met all these interesting characters on the way, and there were real, solid jokes that held throughout the film, playing in and out and tying it all together. The jokes were kind of shocking, and offensive in a playful, thought-provoking way.

Bruno is an utterly pointless romp through Hollywood’s celeb scene, stomped on and drenched with absolutely arbitrary gross-out nudity. When it comes down to it, it’s unfortunately what many critics and Hollywood insiders have been predicting: the gag is lost because everyone knows Sasha Baron Cohen now. He can’t pull one over anymore. People think oh, hey, he’s doing something crazy for a film. The brilliance behind his Borat character was that people had no reason to think this was not a real, insane person. But that brilliance can obviously only be reached in the first film. The jig is up. So Bruno just fell flat, with a big “meh” and some less…big…body parts. Cohen needs to find a new vehicle for his next film. He’s never going to be able to convince us he’s not himself anymore. Even if he’s walking down a highway in Texas in S&M gear with another man strapped to him.

And as far as the gay controversy…we are familiar with Cohen’s methods of teaching awareness from Borat. He shocks his audience by magnifying prejudice and bigotry, to the point where ignorance is absolutely disgusting. Both Bruno and Borat are monsters, made from the very racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic threads that run through humanity. Cohen takes the mirror and points it back at us. When clips of Bruno began to leak, a lot of the gay community spoke out, accusing Cohen of basically taking the gay movement back about thirty years. He made homosexuality a disgusting mockery. Having faith in Cohen, I trusted that this was all part of the plan to show viewers just how gross homophilia is. But upon seeing the film, I do think he just…takes it too far? I can’t put my finger on it. But it didn’t help the gay movement. I think Cohen meant well, I think he meant to teach tolerance in his usual bizarre way, but he overshot it. Leaving the film completely void of purpose.

July 13th, 2009 by Courtney Iseman | Posted in Reviews | (0)