Eye Candy #48 - "Bruno"

Bruno: I am of the opinion that your enjoyment of Sacha Baron Cohen movies is directly proportional to your ability to discern that his schtick only really varies from movie to movie by accent. So if you’ve seen “Borat”, er, I mean, “Bruno”, you’ve seen “Bruno”, er, I mean “Borat”. This is the same basic gimmick as the last go-round, except instead of a reporter from Kazakhstan looking for America, we get a terminally stupid gay fashion model from Austria looking for fame. And where as “Borat” was more goofy, “Bruno” is wildly more sexual. Vignettes include an attempted seduction of Ron Paul, graphic oral sex on the ghost of Milli from Milli Vanilli, full frontal male nudity (and I do mean FULL, including a talking penis), joining the military, sexual deprogramming, and an attempt at achieving peace in the Middle East. Some of the beats from both films are almost identical - Azamat abandons Borat, Lutz leaves Bruno. Cohen’s made an art out of exposing fringe lunatics as…(surprise, surprise) fringe lunatics, from stage mothers to bigots to rednecks to homophobes to religious zealots to Hollywood types and reality television. It’s not that difficult to do - you usually just have let them talk. I’m all for making these kinds of people look like the fools they are…I just don’t think that really portrays the bulk of Americans accurately or illuminates the human condition universally either, as Cohen and his camp would have you believe. This is “Punked” with a higher budget, but not a higher brow. Not a film for kids. Woodchuck sez, “You have seen this movie before. It also started with a ‘B’.”