Bruno *1/2/****

Bruno is a sometimes funny, sometimes offensive, but always bizarre and shocking piece of work from the mind of Sacha Baron Cohen. The film, like Borat, is shot like a documentary in which a blatantly homosexual Austrian decides to travel to Los Angeles to become famous. The film follows Bruno in his journey to superstardom while at the same time supposedly exposing the homophobia of America. As a gay person myself, I had some problems to Cohen’s approach, and I’m not one that gets offended easily.

I’ll start off by mentioning the good. The film itself is pretty funny. The bizarre situations are pretty funny, but Cohen pushes them to the extreme mostly overdoing them, nullifying what came before. His gags start off amusing but fall short when they persist. Most of the parts I found funniest were amusing one-liners such as Bruno yelling to a runway model: “Push your shoulders back! This is a runway show not a slave auction” or when talking to a priest that is going to convert Bruno and make him straight, Bruno mentions that his lips are perfect blow job lips. The guy responds by saying his lips are made to spread the word of God. “They’re made for something else but whatever” is Bruno’s response. These parts are funny because they aren’t overdone.

Most of Bruno, however, turns sour after the joke runs too long. Yes, it is initially funny and shocking to see how far some parents will go to get their kids exposure, but after Bruno’s interviews with parents seems to go on for five minutes my interest has been lost. When Bruno and Lutz and handcuffed together (to put it nicely), they’re journey seems to go on forever. At that point I’m just grossed out and not interested. The only joke that doesn’t grow old is Bruno’s baby O.J.

The situations that Bruno gets himself in are also the main problem with the film. They are very contrived. He approaches people that are extremely homophobic not even bothering to acknowledge that there are people in America that have accepted homosexuals. I understand the point is to expose the homophobia so he travels to areas where homophobia does exist, but the film doesn’t even show that some progress has been made. It makes America to overall be full of ignorant, white trash, hillbillies. Of course the perception of gay people isn’t going to be good when you put a flamboyant flamer in places like Alabama and Arkansas. I pride myself in being straight acting. This is even brought up in the movie. When Bruno tries to become straight he goes to a karate instructor to learn how to defend himself from homosexuals. Bruno asks how to spot said homosexuals, and the instructor says it is hard because some appear like normal people-kind of like terrorists blending into society. This part, while somewhat offensive, is hysterical.

It’s true too. I consider myself the type of gay person that just blends into the crowd, and I think this is what America needs. We don’t need flamboyant people flaunting around their gay pride. This is exactly what turns “straight America” away from legalizing same sex marriage. I consider myself normal; it doesn’t matter that I’m a guy that likes guys. I act like everyone else. My friends and family don’t consider it a big deal either because I don’t go out of my way to make it apparent to everyone that I’m gay. My parents said that they would tell people I’m gay if asked. When mentioning me in conversation, though, it would be like, “This is our son, he’s blank, blank, blank, oh and he happens to be gay.” This is exactly how it should be to me, and I love my parents for taking this stance. But no, there are people in the world that want to go around yelling to the heavens that they are gay.

So this is where the film screws up. It creates a character that is one of the biggest flamers I have ever witnessed and sticks him in situations with extremely homophobic people. I think the whole of America would come around if gay people didn’t have to flaunt it. Yes, it’s good to be proud of your sexuality, but one can do this without shoving his dick in someone’s face saying “Hey I’m a homosexual. Are you interested in sucking my dick today?”