Bruno is hilarious, but fails as social commentary

in TV by griffn — July 22, 2009 at 2:55 am | 3 comments

So a couple nights ago, I took the wife out to see Bruno.  Problem: Bruno is not a date movie.  Don’t be fooled by the charming commercials that contain the 30 seconds of the movie they can show on TV.  Unless your girl enjoys talking penises, elaborate S&M costumes that include toilet bowl brushes, kung fu dildo battles, and graphic man-on-pygmy action, she probably won’t enjoy Bruno.  If your girl does enjoy those things, find a new girl.

On the other hand, Bruno isn’t really a night out with the fellas either.  As funny as it is (and I couldn’t breathe at times), there aren’t enough “no homos” in the world to shield you and your boys from what can only be described as an 81-minute eyeball prison rape.  It’ll take months of fist bumps and half hugs to salvage your crew’s heterosexuality.

But like I said, Bruno is really, really funny.  The comedy doesn’t come so much from what Sacha Baron Cohen is doing, but from the fact that there is almost always somebody sitting there politely watching him do it.  Or better yet, participating.

Most of Bruno’s victims think he’s a quirky foreigner filming a legit documentary/reality show/news program for Austrian television.  So when he drops to his knees in the middle of a séance to perform oral sex on the invisible ghost of Rob Pilatus (the dead half of Milli Vanilli), rest assured someone is sitting nearby squirming, but staying politely silent, until Bruno– or rather, until Pilatus is finished.  And when Bruno asks a martial arts instructor to show him how to defend against dildo-wielding homosexuals, the sincerity with which the instructor participates, even as he’s being poked in the ear with a replica of a 12-inch black penis– on camera– is hilarious.  It’s hands down one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen.

And maybe that’s enough.  But I got the feeling that when Sacha Baron Cohen set out to make Bruno, he imagined it would not only be funny, but also serve as a social commentary of sorts, a state of our homophobia address.

The plan was this: present unsuspecting people with a gay man doing gay things, point the camera, and watch as their prejudices reveal themselves.  Unfortunately, the lengths Cohen goes to to provoke a reaction out of his victims says less about America’s feelings towards gays and more about our feelings towards people who are annoying, disruptive, and vulgar.  Cohen’s Bruno isn’t so much a gay man doing gay things as he is a gay man doing extremely obnoxious things.  And it’s the extreme obnoxiousness that undercuts whatever point he’s trying to make.

For example, there’s a scene where Bruno and his male companion walk through the middle of a street protest by a virulently anti-homosexual “Christian” group.  But it’s not enough for Bruno and friend to just be a gay couple walking down the street.  They are naked and chained to each other with the aforementioned S&M leather and chains outfit.  And when even that fails to provoke a reaction– believe it or not, the group seems to mostly ignore them– Bruno grabs someone’s sign and tries to make off with it.

What that says about homophobia and what insights it gives us into one of the most homophobic organizations in America amounts to exactly nothing.  And the reason is because you could walk through a gay pride parade in the exact same outfits, doing the exact same thing, grab somebody’s sign, and get the exact same outraged reaction.  For most of the stunts Bruno and his partner perform, you don’t have to be homophobic to be disgusted or annoyed by what they’re doing.  And that’s the problem.  It doesn’t make you homophobic to not want to see a talking, dancing penis.

So in the end, Bruno is a comedy– and like I said, maybe that’s good enough– that will teach you little and entertain you greatly.  If there’s any lesson at all, it’s that Americans are generally pretty polite until you drop your pants and start poking them with a dildo.

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