Blog entries

• Previous |
• Next |
• All

• Brüno

  Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 7:14AM / Standard Entry / Members only
  3 comments

  

  “Brüno”
  (dir: Larry Charles; 2009)
  
  When the first techno beats swarm the theater and the distribution logo for Universal Studios appears with an umlaut, you can already guess what kind of comedy Sacha Baron Cohen will unleash on us. What’s presented by the British comic this time round is not an amusing and sometimes pertinent peek into the workings of bigotry—as it was with 2006’s “Borat”—but an endless pronunciation of W’s as V’s. The laughs are also endless, but they often resort to indiscriminate showings of phalluses—in one case, even a talking penis. Gifted and fearless Baron Cohen follows up Borat, the prejudicially clueless Kazakh television personality, with yet another character: Brüno, an outrageously dandy fashion show host from Austria. One sequence claims to reveal just exactly what the average gay couple do on a quiet night in the apartment, and in the process leaves no doubt which parts of the human anatomy comedy derived from. In a mere 82 minutes we are treated to countless gags that originate less often from the brain than from below the belt, and sometimes from the mouth, gagged with a toilet brush.
  
  Yet sillier are the pranks Baron Cohen subjects his celebrities to. The stunt against Paula Abdul, who is made to sit on “Mexican chair people,” is inventive, yet not all that illuminating or damning—Ms. Abdul remains the most humanitarian of the three American Idol judges. And the joke is no longer contemplatively funny and only hey-look-what’s-happening-now funny when catering arrives in the form of sushi on a naked Hispanic body. With “Brüno,” Baron Cohen has entirely abandoned the smaller chuckles that allow audiences the relative quiet to think about what they are snickering at, instead relying on uproars about grotesque behavior of excessive proportions. I fail to grasp exactly how perpetuating the most hackneyed stereotypes of gay culture, frame after frame, helps mock homophobia. Baron Cohen panders where he ought to be examining—surely A-list celebrities like Bono and Sting are not immune. All of which is to say that we better not elevate Baron Cohen’s antics up to where it doesn’t belong. Baron Cohen simply can't get away with inquisition any longer, and there were already hints in “Borat” that the conceit was falling apart. All he can do, post-Borat, is entertain. Baron Cohen’s subjects display grace under fire even Hemingway will be proud of, and if the comic’s aim is to embarrass his prey, the result is only that we enjoy—and sometimes cringe at—how the jester humiliates himself.
  
  “Borat” was at times smart and focused; “Brüno” is strangely funnier. In "Borat," we were treating ourselves to some pain when we go along with a clown who’s poking fun at us. That’s wise foolery for you, “and to do that well craves a kind of wit,” as Shakespeare would say. “Borat” invited the audience to deride a sexist, anti-Semitic dope plainly exhibiting intolerances we all harbor to varying degrees. It might be against our better judgment to laugh boisterously at someone expertly embarrassing himself in public, but that's what "Brüno" offers, and the joke's easy to swallow. However, can we truly take up the offer of “Brüno” and chuckle at gay behavior? Isn't that what bigots do, exaggerate the extremes of a minority culture and ask others to join the fun? Watching so oppressively talented a performer as Baron Cohen spatter his “spünke” at whomever he wishes—and most often at himself—drove the people sitting in the cinema next to me into frenzies. Baron Cohen is that good, and “Brüno” is funny. Just let’s call it what it is: appallingly funny. ♦