Bruno

This is the latest serving of lard from Sacha Baron-Cohen, who previously brought us Borat, and, at one point in history, was the man behind Ali G from Channel Four’s ‘The 11 O’clock Show’. Like the Borat movie, Bruno sets out to ridicule the many serious (on appearance) people who feature in it. Bono, Elton John, Sting and Paula Abdul are also given cameo roles.

Looking around the cinema I estimate the age group of viewers to be between 15 and 40. Is the movie getting belly laughs? No. There are only a few brief chortles when Bruno goes to the Middle East to try, in vain (surprise, surprise), to get agreement between the Arabs and Israelis and confuses Hamas with hummus – this causes mild laughter, definitely no howling.

However this movie undoubtedly has its humorous moments: it runs on the basis of exposing the lack of irony of Americans. But this line of comedy only goes so far. It is interesting to note that Bruno is of Germanic extraction and Germans and Americans are two peoples where ironic comedy is in short supply. Overall the reaction from my fellow viewers is fairly mute. Despite its silliness, Bruno has been banned by the authorities in Ukraine and Kazakhstan – someone obviously takes it seriously.

On a trip to Africa Bruno, like Madonna, picks up a child and makes the boy his ‘son’. Returning to an airport in LA, he is shown, disgracefully, taking the tot from a cardboard box on the baggage conveyor belt. This occurs in the full presence of everyone in the arrival hall! On a US chat show Bruno causes anger when telling the audience of naming his ‘son’, OJ. The livid audience go bananas when Bruno tells them he got his baby by swapping him for an I Pod.

Another part of this movie sees Bruno in the company of hard-line, ultra- masculine bear hunters. When he tells them that there’s a similarity between them and the ‘Sex & the City’ girls he earns glaring looks. If this was a real documentary I suspect Baron-Cohen would have been lucky to have got away unscathed. Indeed the journalist John Waters, on Pat Kenny’s radio show, last week, said he thought the participants in Bruno were all “in” on the joke. In other words a fake. He’s probably not far off the mark. As this crazy caper continues we are brought to a Swingers club, with Bruno of course. The gay Austrian character succeeds in aggravating some of the Swingers who don’t appreciate his homosexual innuendo.

“Achingly funny”, is how the Irish Times describe this novelty trash and there’s a big push to promote it on a global scale, even though it has been given a controversial reaction in many quarters. Offending the conservatives is the objective here and that’s as exciting as it gets. However, with Colm McCarthy’s ‘An Bord Snip’ proposals slicing the nation to ribbons, and depressing us all, this movie has one virtue at least – it’s a good diversion and isn’t boring, despite its many weakness’. That’s the maximum credit I can pay to this slop. Definitely not Oscar material.