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For those who loved Sacha Baron Cohen’s last film, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, then I’m afraid you’re in for disappointment.  As with the aforementioned movie, Cohen uses Brüno as an opportunity to set up outrages situations with a brazen character.  Unfortunately, whereas Borat might have been fun to watch because of a simulated culture shock, Brüno’s “quirkiness” is completely inexcusable.  The few moments truly worth laughing at have nothing to do with the intricacies of the character as much as his pure moronity.  There’s a particular moment where he confuses the terrorist group “Hamas” with the chickpea based spread, “hummus.”  Couldn’t any character with a low IQ have made the same hilarious faux pas?  The only real purpose Brüno’s offensively exaggerated flamboyancy has is to fit in as many close-ups of penises waggling around as time would permit.

The movie opens up with a short ecstasy induced monologue where we first learn to hate Brüno.  He then treats us to a scene of him performing various sex acts with a pygmy named Diesel (convincingly played by Clifford Bañagale), which seems to be right out of an Austin Powers movie.  Shortly thereafter he is shunned by the Austrian fashion world he alleges to have belonged to, and is then shuttled off to the U.S. to shout unmarketable catchphrases at B-list celebrities.

The basic format of each vignette in the movie goes as follows: first Brüno says or does something inappropriate.  Then the affected party either yells at Brüno, ignores him, or runs away while also opting for one of the former two options.  Keep the camera pointlessly running for a few minutes after the punch line, then multiply this times a dozen and you have in essence, Brüno.   Even with this repetition withstanding, at an 88 minute running time, it is painfully obvious that the producers were scraping the bottom of the barrel to get enough viewable footage to consider this a “feature film.”  This film would have been more suited had it instead been released as a 45-minute HBO comedy special.

Littered throughout the mess are scenes between Brüno and his assistant that are meant to connect the dots, giving us a reason for the characters to move onto the next scene.  These moments feel like they were stripped right out of a Fiedberg and Seltzer movie (i.e. Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie).  Need I say more?

After Brüno has played the pilot of his new talk show to a focus group, we are left with the comments made by some members of the test audience.  After watching Brüno interview clueless celebrities and wag his genitals at the camera, one man responds, “No logical person would ever consider a show like that unless they had some sort of moral defect.”  Let’s just say that I left with the same sentiment.

-Paul Brinnel