On the Big Board |
| Position |
Staff |
In Brief |
| 14/20 |
Les Winan |
A hilarious takedown of America's homophobia. |
| 23/38 |
John Seal |
Consistently funnier than Borat |
| 82/82 |
Kelly Metz |
I was hoping for a repeat of Borat - ya know, something that was actually funny. I thought this was offensive and not even slightly funny. Painful to watch. |
| 159/169 |
Max Braden |
Borat worked well to expose American prejudices, but other than the scene about child actor parents, Bruno is just antagonistic. |
Once you've pranked an entire country, what's left for an encore? If you're Sacha Baron Cohen, you try to prank that country again and up the degree of difficulty.
2006 saw Cohen's Borat character, an impossibly naïve and uncomfortably anti-Semetic Kazakh journalist, take America by storm with his mockumentary tour, tricking unsuspecting people into revealing their darkest thoughts. After that film earned almost $130 million, that character, like Ali G, had to be retired. It's not easy to fool people after your face has been on every TV screen in the country.
Cohen has one character left from his TV show. That's Bruno, a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashion designer. To say that this issue is a little more fraught with peril is a bit of an understatement, especially since he's going with the in-your-face mockumentary style once again. Borat director Larry Charles isn't returning, replaced with Ali G writer Dan Mazer, but the director of this film is mostly charged with keeping the proceedings going – it's Cohen's show.
It's difficult to imagine that Cohen could catch lightning in a bottle a second time, as even though Bruno is a distinctly different character than Borat, playing in gayface is going to be notably more uncomfortable for most audiences. Also, you have to figure at least some people will be on to him now. All in all, this seems like a risky idea with a big potential payoff. (Reagen Sulewski/BOP)
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