Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Brüno Vas Wunderbar!!

Brüno, who has no known surname, is a homosexual Austrian fashionista claiming to be a reporter from an Austrian television station. Sacha Baron Cohen who plays Brüno interviews unsuspecting guests about topics such as fashion, entertainment , celebrities and homosexuality, with an emphasis on the latter as each interview progresses in Brüno

In "Borat," Sacha Baron Cohen played an ignorant, anti-Semitic journalist from Kazakhstan who traveled to the U.S. to make a faux documentary. In Brüno, he's a flamboyantly gay Austrian 'fashionista' who's determined to be an American celebrity. In both provocative ventures, Cohen cajoles real, unsuspecting people into awkward situations - with hysterical consequences. This time, Cohen crassly exploits the attitudinal discomfort known as homophobia that's created when heterosexuals, particularly men, encounter aggressive homosexuality. The film's storyline - what there is of it - is merely a needle with which to thread together a series of outrageous stunts. Brüno is fired from his Austrian TV fashion show Funkyzeit after gatecrashing a catwalk show in Milan. Shunned by the superficial fashion world, he decides to do something more worthwhile with his life: go to LA and become a celebrity - "ze most famous Austrian since Hitler" no less. What Brüno lacks in plot, it makes up for in point, satirising homophobia and lampooning the vacuous pursuit of fame for fame's sake via the adoption of African babies and charitable causes. Brüno even goes to "Middle Earth" to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem and confound leaders on both sides by confusing Hamas with hummous. And in a stunt that could surely have gone badly wrong, he also attempts to get himself kidnapped by a terrorist organisation in Lebanon in order to see his hostage video go viral. In one scene, sex-crazed Brüno inveigles Representative Ron Paul into his hotel room and tries to seduce him on the pretext of interviewing him about economics; after maintaining his dignity as long as possible, the conservative Texas congressman exits the premises in disgust, muttering, "This guy's a queer. He's crazy!" In another, Brüno chats with Paula Abdul who's served hors d'ouvres off a naked Mexican. (A similar sequence with LaToya Jackson was cut after the untimely death of her brother Michael.) Then there's Bruno's 'adoption' of a baby in Africa, a thwarted kidnapping in Lebanon and various attempts to 'go straight' with martial arts instruction and religious conversion.

Perhaps the most scandalous gag is Brüno's casting session for glamorous 'baby' photo-shoot for which ambitious parents recklessly offer up their offspring. "Is your baby comfortable with bees, wasps and hornets?" he inquires. "Oh, yes, he's comfortable with everything," one mother assures him. "Dead or dying animals?" "Yes." In an even more appalling dialogue, another mother assures him that her 30-pound daughter could lose 10 pounds in one week, if necessary, adding "I'd have to do whatever I could." Over the years, British-born Sacha Baron Cohen has developed this rude if riotous alter-ego (Ali G, Borat, now Brüno) and he's become a cultural phenomenon, an original comic character, exploring radical and risky events, forcing people to challenge their own preconceptions and stereotypes. And director Larry Charles' choice of 'reaction shots' are priceless. It's essential - but hardly comfortable - viewing. You'll watch most of it through splayed fingers, and at times you'll need a spare hand to pick your jaw up off the cinema floor. Whether it's outrageously offensive or offensively outrageous, it's laugh-out-loud funny. This gets a 4 on my "Go See" scale, because even though it's offensive to just about EVERYONE, you won't be able to stop yourself from laughing. 

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