shoop and bruno

The best way to sum up Sasha Baron Cohen's latest, Bruno, is that it suffers from a bad case of wanting to be Borat. If you were a fan of the Ali G show that ran on HBO for a while in this country, you could see it coming. That's where a lot of us were introduced to Cohen's three major creations, Ali G, Borat, and Bruno. Of the three, Bruno was always the least hysterical, possibly because the persona was the most familiar. After all, Ali G was a clueless English rapper wannabe, and Borat was the "innocent" from Kazakhstan, which most of us couldn't find on a map. But Bruno was "fabulous"--Viennese accent aside, we'd seen him before.

The TV Bruno had his moments--particularly confronting a minister who specializes in converting gays (Cohen revisits this territory in the movie to diminishing effect) or saying outrageously gay things to people at gun fairs (in the movie, he does this on a hunting trip--again, to diminishing effect). But even at Bruno's best, his routines never rise above the raucous practical joke, relying on the sort of shock that above-average crank call shows achieve. It's (intermittently) funny, and there's always an element of "I can't believe he did that." And Cohen/Bruno gets props for never breaking character, even when he's getting chased or when people throw things at him. Nevertheless, while Borat, by gaining the confidence of his dupes and getting them to reveal their most shocking beliefs, propelled that movie into the realm of corrosive satire, Bruno, by contrast, merely goads his subjects into saying or doing something mean--the difference is significant. The final climactic set-piece is the biggest let-down--the crowd gets angry when the "wrestling match" becomes a hugely open gay display? You don't have to be a homophobe to be angry for being ripped off. Nor do you have to be Ron Paul to get pissed off that an interview turns out to be a set up for a would-be porn tape. So, all in all, a come-down and a disappointment for the talented Cohen.

Still, it's almost worth it to hear Bruno refer to Mel Gibson as "der fuhrer." Yes, Mel still has it coming.