Blog from the Future Past

Brüno is Sacha Baron Cohen's lame attempt to wallow in the mud churned up by his Borat splash, this time as a flamboyant fashionista with a German accent and an affected lisp. It's pretty much the same film as Borat, following the format right down to similar attempts at his Christian 'conversion' and naked wrestling with his manager/partner. Along the way, Brüno punks redneck cage-fight fans, a black talk-show audience, a swingers party, a trio of deer hunters, and even politico Ron Paul... as he tries to seduce him, calling him, 'RuPaul' If Cohen could stick to his punking schtick, it would be a funnier, more entertaining film. Instead, like Borat, he insists on spoofing the theatre audience with his gross self-indulgence, as if a character study of Brüno is really necessary, or prancing around half-naked or with rude displays of full frontal nudity are things theatre-goers are bound to find intriguing.

Sasha Baron Cohen is the modern equivalent of the fabled 19th-century flatulist Le_Pétomane, except the talented French farter had way more class.

I suppose one could try for a long reach and call Cohen's antics performance art, if it were good. It's not, mainly because we never convinced a character named Brüno is anything more than Sacha Baron Cohen over-hamming it up in drag.

I suppose this comes from trying to fill up 90-minutes with a collection of skits. Cohen choose to use up about 30 of those minutes by prancing around like a jerk in various states of excessive undress. Not sure why I went to see this one, except that some of the Borat skits worked well. Brüno turned out to be more like watching endless reruns of a fatal train wreck.

This klunker could make someone really miss Pamela Anderson.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5.0 thoroughly disgusted
Fat Laughing Golden Buddhas