Movie Review - Brüno (2009)

Starring Sacha Baron Cohen

Written by Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Dan Mazer, and Jeff Schaffer

Directed by Larry Charles

My Year of Firsts continues! I'm fairly certain this is the first (non-porn) movie I've seen that has had the following disclaimer tagged onto the end: "All sexual acts depicted onscreen were performed by persons eighteen years of age or older." Whoopee! The Year of Firsts continues to grow! [Note to any family reading this: Please disregard the "non-porn" disclaimer that I tacked on above. Porn? What is that? Never heard of it.]

Where to even start. Should I start with a paraphrased quote from the movie: "I'd rather stab my eyes with hot pokers than watch that again." Or perhaps this one: "That was worse than cancer."

Or do I start with the fact that if seeing a close-up straight-on shot of a wriggling, dancing, twirling penis for 15 seconds is your idea of good time then this is the movie for you (I'm guessing at the amount of seconds said penis was onscreen because my eyes were focused on anything but the screen at that moment). [Side note: Year of First continues! First time I've written "penis" on my blog! Whoopee! Ugh...]

Or do I start with the fact that the German umlaut (that funky thing over the 'u' in Brüno's name) is my favorite accent to place over a vowel. It could totally take down the sorry French and their accents both aigu (é) and circonflex (ê). And don't even get me started on the Spanish and their tilda (ñ)...all curvy...what kind of accent is that?

Um...I don't really know where to go with this one. Cohen's previous venture into big screen exhibitionism was with Borat. This one goes sleazier and sicker and "pushes the envelope" (Can I get that line credited to me in a commercial). Brüno is a gay host of a German television fashion show that gets abruptly canceled after he ruins a runway show in Europe. We in America must be more forward-thinking than those Europeans! Cross the Atlantic, Brüno! Similar to Borat who came to America in search of our good old "apple pie values" and work ethic, Brüno (God, I love that umlaut) comes to America in search of fame!

The film ends (I'm gonna skip the whole middle because there's no point in discussing it) with a scene similar to what happens at the end of Borat (of course this is after the actual sex scenes that we witness which were conveniently -- and thankfully -- hidden behind strategically placed black boxes...actual sex scenes...my mind is still reeling that this got an 'R', I guess). In Borat, the title character attends a rodeo and pisses (metaphorically speaking) on Middle America's values by essentially calling them racists. In this flick, Brüno goes to a cage wrestling match and makes out with another man while (metaphorically speaking) calling Middle America homophobes.

All of the scenes are supposed to look as if they are really happening with real "American" people, but for the most part, it would be mind-boggling to me if a huge chunk of this wasn't staged. If it is "real," the fact that the filmmakers can avoid being sued as they finagle whatever contracts they make these people sign by lying to them is insane to me -- saying "Hey, do you want to be in a movie" and leaving out the part where they fuck them over by making them look like total idiots onscreen (I'm talking to you, former presidential candidate Ron Paul). I guess the scenes are supposed to be funny, but the movie just makes me feel bad for these "real" people for some reason.

Admittedly, I think I laughed three or four times (which is three or four more times than I laughed in Year One and Dance Flick...combined!). But that still doesn't make this a good movie by any stretch of the imagination.

Maybe making fun of the Hollywood elite and their obsessions with whatever they're obsessed with at the moment could've been funny, but instead Cohen rehashes the same crappy schtick from Borat -- making fun of Middle America because of their so-called "backwards" value system. I asked my two fellow moviewatchers after the flick (our third companion was the smart one and actually walked out) whether the movie is trying to say that if you hate this movie, you're homophobic. A topic of debate that no one will want to discuss because all three of us will want to cleanse any images of this film from our memory.

The RyMickey Rating: F