The first 10 minutes of Bruno, featuring an outrageous and distasteful anal sex scene, is a straight kick to the balls. And no, the rest of the movie isn't about to pull any punches either.
Vulgar and extreme, Sacha Baron Cohen's latest mockumentary is 2009's answer to the first Scary Movie installment: An unrelenting comedy that utilizes all its resources to make wicked jokes that push the envelope, open it, and then piss inside said envelope. And the most surprising part? It works. Even if you hate yourself for laughing.
Let's address the first question on everybody's mind: no, Bruno is not funnier than Borat. It is funnier than Scary Movie, though. Why isn't Bruno as humorous as its predecessor? Mostly because too many of the segments in the movie feel staged and by now, in the aftermath of Punk'd and Borat, several of the jokes taste exactly like re-heated Five Star from last night.
This isn't to say the movie doesn't have its moments - it actually has an ass-load of them. In his second go-round, Cohen still has some razor sharp wit intact, only this time it comes with jockstraps and an African "Gayby."
Bruno opens with an introduction to Cohen's titular character as he disgraces a European fashion show and, as a result, quickly becomes persona non grata'd from his home country of Austria. Eager to achieve celebrity elsewhere, Bruno invades the States and prances, sashays, and manipulates his way into becoming the "biggest Austrian celebrity since Hitler." What follows is a whole-heartedly ugly, yet lamentably realistic, depiction of America and it's emphasis on stardom and questionable "moral values."
Cohen is a skilled comedic genius become humanitarian who specializes in wildly inappropriate jokes and set-ups that uncover the ugly blemishes of society. With Borat, he brought audiences three University of South Carolina fraternity brothers whose unscripted racist and sexist remarks put on display the arrogance and bigotry that plagues our nation. This time, Cohen's guerilla warfare successfully targets celebrities, intolerant Arkansans, two public relations advisors who should have their degrees revoked immediately, and anyone else who crosses Bruno's path.
Still, one nagging question remains: How much of Bruno is staged and how much is not? The musical number at the conclusion of the film is surely staged, but the side-splittingly uncomfortable "exchange" with Ron Paul? Not so much. Even so, you'll be laughing too hard to care what is real and what is not.
Part of the genius of Bruno is that Cohen's "sequel" features a little bit of something to insult everyone. This is, after all, a movie that has scenes of a talking penis, Mexicans used as furniture, two men tied together in bondage while parading through a group of anti-homosexual picketers, and a less-than-happy Harrison Ford.
As such, it's best to assume that the movie is not meant for the shy, the faint, the politically correct, homophobes, right-wing conservatives, terrorists, or easily offended Austrians. However, any movie that refers to Mel Gibson as "Führer" pretty much has me sold from the get-go.
