Bruno

[Worf101]

Finally saw the latest missle from Sacha Baron Cohen last night. Here're my impressions.

The joke is wearing thin. The whole idea of a (gay, eastern european, wanna be gangsta take your pick) buffoon stumbling bumbling his way through America and in the process exposing America's seedy underbelly was interesting for a time but he's taken it about as far as he can go. Unless he does the next one in BlackFace I don't see what more he can do.

Don't get me wrong the film is still drop dead funny but where Borat seemed effortless, this one seems to be obviously trying too hard. He manages to find awkard situations to put his gay hero in. How he wasn't killed or shot during filming I'll never know. Some episodes might have been staged, but the scenes in the middle east where he's being chased by Hassidim and led away by gun totin' Palestinians are firghteningly scary.

This film is dying at the Box Office. Box office gold is the young male demographic. This film will turn off most straight males and enrage even the mildly homophobic to no end. Sugi, my friend who owns The Spectrum 8 Theatres (www.spectrum8.com) where I saw it said the films not doing all that well.

Over all I give it a "B". Not groundbreaking like Borat and you find yourself exhausted at the end from a mixture of laughing and dread at what scab he's going to pull off next.

Da Worfster

[3LB]

I've read similar things elsewhere. He's going to have to expose the seedy underbelly of Amish country in PA if he's to find anyone who isn't onto his schtick by now. One guy I know who saw this said there are certainly some funny things in it, but a lot of it seemed scripted. Might be time for Cohen to find a different muse.

David Lettermen perfected this type of "man on the street" ambush comedy in the early '80s, and afterward many small market shows cropped up in every large city who mimmicked Letterman's every move. Howard Stern took up the baton in the late '90s after Letterman lost his nerve for the edgy style of humor (when he moved to CBS) and now, Cohen has made two movies doing basically the same thing.

I read a while back that people in large cities are so jaded to the notion that every camera man/interviewer is a potential gag, that its hard for most "on the street" interviewers to be taken seriously, if they are indeed legit. After Borat, I'm sure the potential for finding dupes was harder than usual. But most people are so obsessed with celebrity, and the potential for celebrity, that I'm sure it wasn't hard to find someone willing to play along, even if they knew it was a joke.

Myself, I could only take Borat in small doses.

[Auricauricle]

I don't understand what the big draw is for these movies in the first place. I saw Borat, after it was released to the Tiny Tube and I found it rather puerile and forced. Thinking that the lampoon was a way of skewering society (satire?), the inanity of the spectacle was so low-brow I could hardly laugh. I like humor that encourages you to think a bit, but Cohen's barbs are so over the top, nary a flicker could be noted in the old synapses. Maybe if he would just stop trying so hard and hamming it up and just play it straight, the ride would be more fun.

[nightflier]

Well before there was Bruno, Borat, or even Ali-G, there was.... Freddy Got Fingered. I lost interest around that time. 'Been meaning to force myself to sit through Borat, to see what all the hoopla's about, but I can't bring myself to waste the time, even if it was "free" (what is the price of time?).

BTW, I've read that a lot more of Bruno was staged than Borat, maybe that's why it's not faring as well.