Brüno

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear. I confess I only went to see Brüno as it was the last English-language film on at the cinema that I hadn’t seen. I wasn’t too bothered about it, but it’s cheap here in Bangkok so what the hell.

I want my ninety minutes back.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: gay fashion icon loses his job in Austria so heads to the US to become famous by any means necessary. Side splitting laughs… erm… don’t really ensue.

OK, there were a couple of laughs but overall this was far more cringeworthy than the forerunner Börat. Sacha Baron Cohen has this time targeted the US’s seeming hatred of homosexuality rather than that of semi-Communist outsiders for what’s basically a re-run of the last movie. The thing is, despite the new character it’s an old joke. There’s even a weak companion character who’s almost a mirror of the fat bloke from Börat.

You’re still wondering how, in some scenes, the “innocent” people involved don’t query the existence of a camera/sound team. Couldn’t they have freed the two guys from the cuffs during one scene? Why is that question not even raised?

The high points of the film are – as in the first, very similar outing – the reactions of “real” people to the situations. Primarily the TV studio audience and the crowd at the all-in fighting match at the end. It’s also horribly indicative of the state of affairs in the US today when you see the lengths some people are prepared to go to to get their children a modelling contract.

I actually thing, in parts, the film is more scary than funny. The fact that these people are real, not actors. That PR advisers can have less brain cells than digits on one hand. That Bible-thumpers genuinely think they can “cure” homosexuality. That grown men will weep because they’ve just seen two males kiss. That people will genuinely consider cosmetic surgery for a 2 year-old.

Brüno is more shocking than funny, and it just doesn’t carry its one joke well. Cohen’s had his two shots – I seriously doubt I’ll bother with the next film (which sounds like another version of the same damn idea all over again).