His Take/Her Take: Bruno
Posted July 10, 2009 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Worth the price of admission, or a waste of time? Brian McKechnie and Suzanne Ellis offer you their take on the latest movies hitting screens. Read their reviews every week, exclusively on CityNews.ca.
Let Brian and Suzanne know what you think of His Take/Her Take via email at brian.mckechnie@citynews.ca or suzanne.ellis@citynews.ca .
BRÜNO
Rated R
Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen
Directed by: Larry Charles
Official Site IMDb
When gay, Austrian fashion show host Brüno is fired from his television show he moves to the United States to attempt to become famous.
Brian’s Take
** out of 5 stars
About half an hour into the Brüno screening someone a few rows in front of me got up and yelled how much the movie sucked and walked out. Sadly, I think more people wanted to follow but didn’t with hopes it would get better, myself included.
I had high hopes and really wanted to like it. The trailers made me laugh and I thought it was fail-proof since I loved what Sacha Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles did with Borat . Unfortunately Brüno felt stale and made me ask: didn’t we see this movie in 2006 when it was called Borat?
Like Borat, Brüno is also a fish-out-of-water story. After he’s fired from his Austrian fashion television show (and his boyfriend leaves him) Brüno (Cohen) moves to Los Angeles with hopes to become a star. Along the way he adopts an African baby, joins the Army, tries to make a sex-tape with Ron Paul and exposes unsuspecting Americans as homophobes. Unlike Borat, it’s not that funny.
It’s too bad Cohen went this route instead of doing more original comedy. He’s a funny guy. His French Formula One character in Talladega Nights saved that movie for me. And seeing him in Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd adaptation was refreshing. The problem with Brüno is Brüno. He gets annoying fast. Short bits with him on Da Ali G Show were much funnier than this film. And where Borat felt natural and real Brüno feels staged and forced.
There are some funny moments and I did laugh a few times. But most of the jokes you’ve already seen if you’ve watched the trailer. And the scenes that were added for pure shock value (Brüno being whipped by a woman at a swingers party when he won’t do the deed with her for example) always seem to go nowhere.
If you want to see Brüno stay home and rent Da Ali G Show instead. Or better yet watch Borat again. Both will give you better laughs for your money.
Suzanne’s Take
** out of 5 stars
Five minutes into Brüno , the latest film to revolve around a Sacha Baron Cohen character, I was reminded of Fashion Television’s short-lived feature The Husk Report .
For those who don’t remember, The Husk Report starred Scott Thompson of The Kids in the Hall as intrepid fashion reporter Danny Husk. Husk’s cheeky dispatches from the world of fashion were cutting, hilarious, and raw, bringing a welcome dose of tongue-in-cheek humour to a business that often takes itself far too seriously. Check it out here.
Similarly, gay Austrian TV host Brüno (Cohen) covers the fashion beat on his what’s hot/what’s not program, but unlike Husk he craves to be a part of the glamourous world, instead of trashing it. And though watching a Velcro-suit-clad Brüno fall on his face on the catwalk is undeniably funny, the rawness that made The Husk Report so funny and unexpected, and which I figured Brüno would have in spades, was largely absent.
That same rawness is part of what made Cohen’s last outing, the 2006 smash-hit Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan , so effective. As Kazakh journalist Borat, Cohen put himself in ridiculous and sometimes perilous situations for the benefit of the film. As evidenced by the unwieldy title, the main target was America and the ultra-conservative Borat managed to elicit some incredibly dim-witted and ignorant comments from his interview subjects.
The formula is pretty much the same in Brüno, as the outspoken character stirs the pot with his words, and sees what bubbles up. After getting fired from his show and blacklisted in Austria, he moves to the U.S. in the hopes of becoming famous. When his initial attempts fail, he comes up with a number of get-famous-quick schemes, all of which end up pissing people off. He grills a purported terrorist in the Middle East in the hopes of becoming a hostage, attempts to seduce U.S. politician Ron Paul for a sex tape, and adopts an African baby (Hey, if Brangelina and Madonna are doing it…) in his quest for notoriety.
So much of Brüno felt scripted, even the parts that I’m guessing weren’t. For instance, in one scene the Austrian host is interviewing parents of toddlers for a photo shoot with the child he’s adopted. He asks the parents whether they’d put their children on diets, allow them near heavy machinery, etc., and the responses are predictably infuriating. Later, he makes out with his male assistant before an audience of homophobes, who respond by first throwing first their plastic cups and then their chairs. There are only so many ugly-American jokes you can take before you crave something else.
Though the characters Brüno and Borat couldn’t be more different, there’s a staleness in Cohen’s most recent effort, and a sense that we’ve seen this shtick before. And it was funnier three years ago, before Cohen himself was uber-famous.
There’s no denying Cohen is an incredibly gifted and clever comedian, and I give him enormous credit for putting himself in these situations for his art, but with Brüno the ends don’t justify the means.
