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You cannot judge Bruno without comparing it to Borat. Both films follow a similar formula(almost identical as far as plot devices go) and they both ultimately want to be satire. I loved Borat. The character had a weird lovability that made you want him to do well. Borat's charm didn't just make the movie more fun to watch, it also made the actual interviews in the film itself play out better, because Borat was just some goofy, confused foreigner and even if you didn't quite understand all the weird poo poo he did, people still tried to be nice and help him out. Bruno is pretty much the opposite of Borat. Bruno is an annoying, obnoxious rear end in a top hat, which wouldn't be a good deal, except the whole point of the movie is to bring out peoples' prejudices. When you make the character so annoying and unlikeable, it doesn't really mean anything when people are assholes to him. Really, it feels like there are two movies here. There is a movie where Cohen is trying to do with homosexuality what he did with racism in Borat, and then there a movie where Cohen is just trying to be as obnoxious as he possibly can for no real reason, like talking to a casting agent while getting his rear end in a top hat bleached. Now, Borat wasn't above some gross out humor, but it didn't fall back on it nearly as often as Bruno does. There were some genuinely great scenes in Bruno, but there was a lot of filler poo poo with him just trying to annoy people. The talk show scene and focus group scenes are good examples of scenes with no real wit or cleverness to them. The focus group was funny, but the only funny part of the talk show was shown in the trailer. The rest was just people looking pissed off, and I couldn't say I blame them. All that being said, there are some great scenes in Bruno. The final scene just might be better than anything Borat had to offer, and it does a masterful job of showing the popular opinion of homosexuality without Cohen running around with his rear end cheeks all over the place. Some of the gross out stuff is even good. There's a particular scene with a psychic that just doesn't seem to end and as stupid and gross as it is, it's pretty drat funny. It was entertaining, but I honestly don't think you'd miss out on anything by waiting for the DVD. Most of the movie felt like it was trying to recreate the naked fight from Borat, but the only reason that was so funny was because it was so out of left field in the middle of a fairly intelligent and clever movie. When you've got balls and rear end thrown at your face every 30 seconds, it gets old long before the runtime is over. 3/5
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Jul 12, 2009 05:12
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 09:28 |
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Bruno had some legit laughs and gross-out humor, but the story was disappointing at best. Bruno was clearly blacklisted from the fashion world, and the obnoxious gay/straight storyline didn't give a very good picture of what the character is about. While it wasn't a bad movie, it was just a letdown based on what we've seen of the Bruno character on the Ali G show, and it seems like they took the easy way out with the gay storyline instead of lampooning the fashion world. 2/5
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Jul 12, 2009 15:49
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I enjoyed this movie, and while it may not have been as hilarious as Borat was at times, it also didn't drag on like Borat did. Bruno never outstayed his welcome. The movie is really divided between Bruno's shock pieces, where he confronts ordinary people with outrageous situations (like the focus group, the airport sequence, the talk show, the hotel room, etc.), and his attempts at "commentary" where he targets some ignorant/bigoted individual exposes their closemindedness. These, I thought, were the strongest and funniest pieces in the movie, especially the sequence with the stage parents who were willing to whore their children out at the drop of a hat. Overall, though, the shock pieces just got tired because there's only so many times that a dildo can elicit a genuine laugh. 3.5/5
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Jul 12, 2009 16:34
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This is the only movie that I have ever walked out on in the middle of. I really enjoyed Borat because he did show the cultural insensitivity some Americans have (if you could understand the deeper message behind it) and the hidden biases that we often hold against foreigners. Bruno on the other hand is not about exposing us to our own homophobias like Borat did to our xenophobias; rather, this is an insult to anyone with a brain. This was shocking but with no point to the shock. I really attempted to find the deeper message behind this movie and I'm completely incapable of finding it. Look, I'm all for pushing the limits - we wouldn't be where we are as a nation if people didn't push the limits. But in all of those times in history (Rosa Parks refusing to sit at the back of the bus as an example), there was an underlying reason or cause to pushing those boundaries. Additionally, this movie shows how bullshit and arbitrary the ratings system of movies are and how they can be swayed with gobs of money. There is a scene with a male penis (the horror) in full view: spinning, hopping, swaying to and fro, and finishing erect, while pointing at you, urethra opens to say "BRU-NOH". Funny? Sure. Easy? Absolutely. Thoughtful? Not in the least. Imagine a vagina doing that same thing - it wouldn't happen. He meets with a man who is the head of a martyrs brigade in Lebanon and literally insults the guy immediately, and then asks the guy to kidnap Bruno to make him a hero. He refuses and then he tells the guy that Osama looks like a dirty Santa Clause and the guy kicks him out. The message was certainly powerful, and he sure showed that AYRAB the evil of his ways through humor. The guy could have killed him right there and that's all I spent the rest of the movie wishing: someone to actually murder Cohen. This movie does nothing for the gay rights movement and just ironically falls into being used as ammunition against the very movement its *probably* there to benefit. If I could give this movie a negative rating, I would. 1/5
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Jul 14, 2009 19:12
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Did you love Borat? You're going to really like Bruno. Did you really like Borat? You're going to like Bruno. And so on, and so forth. Sasha Baron Cohen is one of the best performance artists of all time. Da Ali G Show presented the idea, Borat confirmed it. This, Bruno, being his third work in this style (Ali G Indahouse, being scripted, does not count), most anyone who is seeing it knows what to expect. This both helps and hurts the film: on the one hand, there is no absolutely hilarious moment like the infamous hotel fight in Borat, on the other, Bruno can get away with even more thanks to the movie audience, unlike several in-film audiences, knowing what they're getting in to when they sit down to watch the movie. Bruno tries harder to shock, and sometimes it works wonderfully. Sometimes. It's a somewhat short film, which is good; after all, there's a reason he decided to make the Bruno movie last. I'm more excited to see what he comes up with next then I was for this current film. 3/5
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Jul 14, 2009 19:58
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Bruno has a lot of great moments, but ultimately it fails to do what Borat managed: capture the feel of the characters' Ali G Show segments in a movie format. Where you could have clipped most of Borat's scenes down and placed them back into the Ali G Show without anyone noticing, most of Bruno's footage doesn't hold up to the Bruno segments in the show. It seems really obvious to me that Cohen was trying to capture the out-of-left-field hilarity of the naked fight scene in Borat for Bruno. The closest he comes is the focus group scene (which is really funny) but the rest of the movie is also filled with shock jokes, and a lot of those jokes are stretched out to the point that they get boring. There are still a number of really great satire scenes that comment on our society's obsession with fame, and at least a few that serve as comments on American society's general homophobia. But this would have been a stronger movie if Cohen had stuck to these areas instead of making a shock film. Overall still a very funny movie but Borat was better. 3.5/5
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Jul 15, 2009 21:33
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Bruno is awesome. It's far more entertaining than Borat, which had too many filler scenes to be worth watching multiple times. Bruno, on the other hand, is non-stop hilarity. If you don't like Bruno, you're a fuddy-duddy. 5/5
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Jul 17, 2009 02:38
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This movie was loving stupid. There is gross funny and gross stupid, this was the latter. it makes Life of Brian look like Passion of the Christ. here are several gross out sexual scenes, the most shocking being at the beginning when Bruno and his assistant are shown having kinky gay sex, including champagne bottles in asses and some other stuff and later when Bruno has a focus group screen his new show which shows a clip of him spinning his penis onscreen for several seconds . Borat was excellent, this was a pile of steamin g poo poo. The director spent too much time trying to make this look realistic and totally failed. Few people were laughing in the theater I was in, a few people walked out. 1/5
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Jul 20, 2009 06:11
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Bruno was the biggest disappointment I could have imagined. Now I expected a lot of gay humor, and shocking moments, but the shocking moments seemed more like a way to have you squirm and feel extremely uncomfortable with those you see the movie with. There were maybe 2 or 3 scenes where I laughed which is why I rated it like I did. But there is no rewatchability factor for this movie, and it was not "genius" or "brilliant" at all, the scenarios did not seem organic like they did on Borat, and the shock value injected in the film makes it seem like the Producers/Director thought they were going to make a groundbreaking comedy film, but instead it turned out to be something that should have just aired on Showtime (not even HBO). An earlier review said there were too many filler seens in Borat, however, this is unfounded as Bruno in fact felt like an hour of filler next to 20 minutes of comedy. There was very little "social commentary" and I just assumed that everything was produced and scripted possibly with the exception of some "celebrity" cameos. The Wrestling Scene in Arkansas seemed very over the top, and I believe that it could be a real reaction to Bruno loving up (literally) the wrestling match, but I believe the same reaction would have happened in the "Blue states" as well, and to point the finger at Southern homophobia is far too easy of a plot point to derive social commentary from. Don't waste your money. 2/5 Kabz fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Jul 24, 2009 |
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Jul 24, 2009 21:45
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Bruno was probably one of the funniest movies I've seen in a theater. I thought it was better than Borat, and Borat wasn't that funny to begin with. Maybe it's because I didn't see Borat in a theater with a couple of people like I did with Bruno, but I thought that, while it was funny, many laughs were given away in trailers and the whole Pamela plotline was dumb as poo poo. Maybe it's because I walked in with low expectations, but gently caress, there were so many excellent scenes in Bruno. My theater loved it, nobody walked out and everyone including me and my friends was cracking up throughout the whole thing. Yeah, many of the laughs were from shock value. But seriously, what exactly do people think Borat did better than Bruno? I don't think that "HAHA YASE VERY NICE I LIKE-A SEX!!!" is really that much better than Bruno. There were plenty of hilarious scenes. The sex scene, the big interview, the hunting trip, etc. etc. Anyone raving about how Borat was some scalding social commentary about America yadda yadda yadda is retarded. It was a movie about a wacky foreign man with a funny accent haha in kazakhstan we kill the jew and the gay!! Bruno does the same thing, and does it better. There is no deep philosophical message in this movie. There never was supposed to be, and there never was with Borat. It was always Cohen trolling innocent people. People argue that Cohen is a dickhead to people in Bruno, and those people don't deserve it. How about when Borat rented a room from a nice elderly jewish couple that served him food, and then noticed cockroaches in their house and threw money at them because the jews shapeshifted? I don't understand why people say this. Anyway, I enjoyed it. It was a funny movie. 3.5/5
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Jul 26, 2009 22:59
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 09:28 |
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I went into Bruno thinking that the lack of scripting would be a let down, but I was proven wrong within the first 20 minutes. I loved the ridiculous obscenity and absurd situations because it removed you from the painful awkwardness at just the right times. The only real downside to this movie is that there is still a significant amount of painful awkwardness (the hunting scene). The film also included a good amount of moral satire, including a hilarious look into the gritty world of child photography. 4.5/5
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Aug 5, 2009 07:01
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