Like Andy Kaufman, Cohen is a performer who gets so into character that, given the opportunity (and the right comedic foil), he can quickly arrive at a place where comedy can turn to ugly reality. In front of your eyes, he dares himself to go further and further—you can see him taunting himself in order to make the situations even more dangerous and for an understandable reason, and the majority of the laughs come from his sheer audacity and his willingness to do this. The anti-Semitic Borat character brought with it a flurry of lawsuits, buckets of cash and a challenge to raise the bar, which the hilarious willfully Bruno does. But how far can this comedic terrorist go before he pisses off the wrong person as the cameras are rolling?
Cohen’s comedy relies on portraying flagrantly stereotypical characters and then presenting these characters to their real-life counterparts or their polar opposites (also stereotypes of humanity), who play right into his hands. When Cohen’s in character all the world really is a stage and the great unwashed—and lots of unsuspecting folks from the lunatic fringe—make up his supporting cast. So, when portraying the very gay Bruno, it’s easy to guess from whence the comedy will spring. Look out rednecks, conservatives and all manner of fame-seeking wannabes—Bruno’s loose and he’s about to record your idiocy and homophobia for the world to laugh hysterically at.
When we meet Bruno he’s the host of an Austrian fashion program who happily demonstrates seemingly every position of anal intercourse in the Kama Sutra with his self-described “Pygmy flight-attendant boyfriend” while describing his life in his fractured, faux-German accent. But after a mishap with an outfit made entirely out of Velcro lands him headfirst on the runway in Milan and in jail, Bruno finds himself without a job and a boyfriend. With only devoted assistant Lutz in tow, Bruno heads to the United States in his quest to become “the biggest Austrian since Adolf Hitler.”
Like Lucy and Ethel, Bruno and Lutz are soon engaged in an increasingly extreme series of schemes in order for Bruno to attain worldwide recognition—or at the very least, a few tabloid covers. About 20 minutes in—when a focus group of “regular folks” is shown a TV pilot starring Bruno that features a segment with his dancing, singing penis—one thinks, “How much further can he go? How high can the bar be set that he won’t eagerly leap over it?” Based on the hilarious evidence that ensues, it’s pretty damn high. The gotchas include a Hollywood agent, Milan runway models and designers, Paula Abdul (who sits on “Mexican furniture people”), former Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul (who Bruno comes on to), two idiot chick publicists, a psychic, etc.
Bruno next takes a trip to Alabama to become an ex-gay. He tells his “converter”—as the guy talks Jesus and redemption—that the man has “blow job lips.” A stint in the national guard; a hunting trip with three “good ol’ boys”; and a sex party with a swingers group that finds Bruno trapped in a bedroom with a persistent dominatrix sporting basketball sized implants who repeatedly smacks him with a belt all follow. The incongruities build toward the sure-to-be-infamous cage-wrestling match sequence at the end of the picture. Here, the comic insanity reaches a fever pitch as Cohen purposefully plays into the crowd’s homophobia.
The picture repeatedly points out—as Borat did—that, for a comic terrorist like Sacha Baron Cohen, this country must surely be nirvana. The possibilities of finding idiotic folks ready to do anything for some camera time is seemingly limitless. Although it’s obvious that some of the bits are staged, many of them appear to be happening before our eyes in real time. Even the carefully edited pieces contain one jaw-dropping shock after another. Are people really this stupid? This homophobic? This narcissistic? One of the most shocking sequences comes when Bruno, after having adopted an African baby he names “O.J.,” asks the parents of baby models what they will and won’t allow their babies to do in front of the camera.
So is it offensive to gays? That’s the first question everyone asked me as I left the screening. It’s not an unexpected question considering my position as the film critic for a LGBT publication. My instinctual answer: no. Oh, I’m sure there are going to be a lot of people (gay and straight) offended by the havoc (much of it easily categorized as vulgar on one end, obscene on the another) that Cohen/Bruno creates—these are the folks who just won’t get that Cohen’s playing on stereotypes or who are made nervous by his in-your-face approach.
But there is something to be said about not just being in on the joke but being the reason for it in the first place. I understand why close Jewish friends had no problem with the stereotyping in Borat and why they can gleefully sing “Throw the Jew Down the Well” verbatim to this day. I’ll be quoting lines from Bruno along with many of my queer—and I suspect straight—brethren long after Cohen has moved on to his next outrage. A comedy that can present gay stereotypes in such a blatant, over-the-top manner that they can make one laugh uncontrollably? Expose ignorant homophobes right and further right? And throw in several curveballs on our celebrity-obsessed culture and touch on several hot-button issues central to Our People at the same time? Sign me up, girlfriend. Two snaps up—way up.
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