review
Vassup! Get ready... Brüno ist coming. In Sacha Baron Cohen and Larry Charles’ uber encore to 2006’s Borat, the cast and crew embark on a fresh globe trotting, guerilla-style filmmaking adventure and set a new standard of risky provocation. Cohen delivers another daring and unrestrained performance as Bruno, Austria’s most famous, flamboyantly gay fashionista with the acerbic wit who brazenly interviews his guests about fashion and celebrity on his top-rated TV show Funkyzeit mit Bruno (Funkytime with Bruno).
When Bruno’s cutting edge Velcro outfit makes a disastrous show-stopping appearance on the catwalk at Agatha Ruiz De La Prada’s fashion show during Milan’s fashion week, the crowds go wild in outrage and he’s dragged off stage and tossed out by security. After being blackballed from future events, Bruno sets out to re-launch his career determined to become the biggest celebrity since Hitler. He crisscrosses the globe in search of fame and love, perpetrating one outrageous stunt after another on unsuspecting victims as he explores the nature of celebrity.
In Washington, D.C., Bruno sets up a pseudo interview with former presidential candidate Ron Paul. After his TV crew fakes a technical glitch, Bruno lures Paul into the hotel suite’s bedroom, strips down to his underwear and starts dancing provocatively until a visibly shocked Ron Paul storms out. In Los Angeles, Bruno invites Paula Abdul to his new home for a celebrity interview on his fake TV talk show. He recruits his Latino gardeners to serve as impromptu furniture and surprisingly Paula goes along with it. Her lack of media savvy is hilarious and reveals the extent to which people will go to be a celebrity icon.
Next Bruno decides he must become straight to find fame. Citing Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Kevin Spacey as his inspirations, he consults a pastor who specializes in gay conversion. In a hilarious series of vignettes, he asks a martial arts expert to show him how to protect himself against unwanted homosexual advances. He attends a swingers party and convinces one of the male participants to demonstrate the most popular sexual positions while Bruno plays the female partner. He contends with an aggressive, belt-wielding dominatrix who won’t take no for an answer when he refuses to take off his underwear. He infiltrates the Army National Guard headquarters in Anniston, Alabama with amusing results and goes on an overnight hunting trip with gun-toting Alabama rednecks who become increasingly agitated by his pranks.
In an unnerving send-up of child exploitation in the name of celebrity, Bruno holds casting interviews with the parents of aspiring child actors. When he asks a show-biz mom if she’d allow him to hang her child from a crucifix, she tells him anything goes as long as her child gets the part. Bruno suggests increasingly shocking scenarios that reveal the bizarre and dangerous lengths to which some parents will go to get their children in the media spotlight.
The jetsetting Bruno also pokes fun at celebrity adoptions when he goes on safari and swindles a baby from an African tribe in a tiny village. When the child arrives at the Dallas-Fort Worth international airport in a flimsy cardboard box marked ‘fragile,’ he collects it like a precious new souvenir from the baggage carousel to the consternation of his fellow travelers. He brings his newly adopted son to his unorthodox home, carts him everywhere he goes like an exciting new fashion accessory, then appears on a talk show to vault his status in the celebrity community by appearing to be a selfless, doting father. When he tells his jaw-dropping tale, the predominantly African American audience becomes instantly outraged.
Then there’s the terrifyingly funny Middle Eastern segment where Bruno poses as a foreign correspondent. It starts out rather innocuously with Bruno discussing the nutritional merits of Hamas vs. Humus with the former Jordanian prime minister, then escalates to Bruno risking life and limb by going to a truly life threatening location to interview the head of the Bethlehem unit of terrorist group al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade who becomes increasingly agitated as his aide translates Bruno’s barbs and highly offensive statements. As a climatic finale, Bruno sashays through a conservative Hasidic neighborhood in Israel wearing only skin-tight shorts and a Little Debbie-inspired bonnet and winds up being chased through the streets by furious Orthodox Jews.
Finally, there’s the dangerous cage fight Bruno stages at a redneck rumble in Arkansas where he goes from swapping blows to suddenly stripping down to his underwear and trading kisses with the other fighter who’s actually the love of his life, his loyal German assistant and cohort in crime, Lutz (Gustaf Hammarsten). In the angry melee that ensues, the unsuspecting blue collar audience goes berserk as they watch the relationship unfold between Bruno and his cage mate. Moments after the two embrace, a near riot erupts and the infuriated crowd starts lobbing beer and chairs at them.
In an endless series of wildly offensive, boundary-pushing adventures designed to provoke both laughter and anger, Sacha Baron Cohen entertains us by holding up a mirror that compels us to examine our own ridiculous prejudices through gross, over-the-top humor that flies in the face of political correctness. The film is tightly paced with each stunt building on the next to make the audience increasingly uneasy. It’s hard to tell what’s genuine and spontaneous and what’s been scripted. You feel for the victims of Cohen’s guerilla-style comedy as well as worry about his safety once they realize he’s in on the joke at their expense.
Cohen has impeccable comedic timing in this blistering, hoax-filled social satire about one man’s quest to become uber famous. The insane antics, vulgar jokes, machinery-assisted sex toys, and graphic sex (straight and gay) pr
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