Film

Achtung, Gayby

Sadly, Brüno Is but a Piffle at the End of a Press Blitz

by David Schmader

In the end, what history will remember about Sacha Baron Cohen’s Brüno is its prerelease press blitz, a multifaceted, media- and continent-spanning, months-long tornado of garish visuals, nervous gay focus groups, premature accusations of homophobia, endless in-character TV appearances, and a series of highly theatrical, rigorously costumed premieres around the globe. Now that the film has landed, Brüno’s unprecedented press blitz is revealed for what it is: not the lead-up to another uproarious collision of high satire and low comedy like Cohen’s 2006 smash Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, but a smoke screen for a film that’s barely there.

Fears of Brüno dabbling in potentially dangerous homophobia are quickly vanquished, as the onscreen Brüno has little connection to any homosexual who’s ever lived. He’s a pornographic cartoon—claims of “gay minstrelsy” are not unfounded—but the tissue-thinness of both Cohen’s characterization and Brüno’s plot makes the whole exercise far more insulting to its makers’ reputations than to any social group.

For newcomers: Like Borat, Brüno is a character Cohen played on Da Ali G Show, first on the UK’s Channel Four, then on HBO. A flamboyantly gay Austrian fashion reporter, Brüno would lispingly lead various fashionistas down hilariously incriminating rabbit holes, illuminating the frantic amorality of those who place nothing above style. At the start of the Brüno film, our roving correspondent stumbles into a mess that gets him fired from TV, freeing him up to move to America and commence becoming a superstar.

From this point of departure, Brüno wanders here and there, occasionally stumbling into inspired hilarity but more often than not settling for sub-funny junk. Things get good when Brüno is given a compelling context: The close-to-closing scene at a cage-fighting match in the Deep South is the film’s richest, making a hilarious show of folks who think nothing of watching two guys tear the shit out of each other but cry out for blood should their tongues (or more) entwine. Another good couple of scenes throw Brüno in the figurative ring with Christian “gay conversionists.” But far too much time is wasted on meaningless foolishness with all the wit of Eddie Murphy in a fat suit. For those of us who loved Borat (and Da Ali G Show), it’s depressing.