So, I just got back from watching Sacha Baron Cohen's much-anticipated (at least by me...) Bruno. Since I'm blogging about it, and I promised to only blog about movies I didn't like, you can probably guess I was a little let down by the whole experience. In fact, I really kind of feel like scrubbing my brain with a Brillo pad and bleach so I can maybe un-live the last two hours of my life.
The really tragic thing is that Borat was one of the funniest movies of the decade. It was a fucking work of genius. I thought Cohen was a fucking genius for making it. But this mediocre farce means that Borat was a once-in-a-lifetime achievement, Cohen's one brilliant idea, never to be repeated again. For the same reason Milos Foreman should have just quit while he was ahead right after Deerhunter (i.e. before Heaven's Gate), Sacha Baron Cohen should have just quit showbusiness after making Borat.
He might have starved to death, but at least he wouldn't have to deal with me bitchslapping him in my blog (which has been viewed over 30 times).
Borat worked on a a couple levels. As a straight comedy, it worked because the jokes and the set-pieces were hilarious. It could've been totally scripted and it would have been a decent comedy. But what made Borat comic gold was the fact that it wasn't scripted, it was just Cohen unleashing his annoying, clueless, overfriendly foreign persona on regular folks and filming their honest reactions. And by doing that, Borat gave the American people a much-needed lampooning.
Borat's antics were almost a litmus test for human decency and common sense. The nice Jewish couple who take the anti-Semitic Borat into their home? Pass. The drunken frat boys who want to know if women are slaves in Kazakhstan? Fail. The weatherman who can't stop laughing as Borat interrupts his live broadcast to say goodbye? Pass. The comedy instructor who listens to Borat talk about his retarded brother in a cage, and then says no one in America would find that funny? Fail.
But that's not how Bruno works. Cohen tries to use the same recipe here, but the ingredients are totally different. Bruno is a vapid, self-obsessed, supergay Austria fashion designer. This character doesn't work because A)his vapidness and self-obsession are totally overshadowed by his supergayness, so that's the only thing anyone really notices about the character, and B)no sane person could ever believe that this is a real guy.
Watching Borat, you're not laughing at him so much as you're laughing at the people he meets for being dumb enough to be fooled by his insulting foreign caricature. But in Bruno, hardly anyone falls for it, and you get the sense that those who seem to be are really just playing along. That's why when Bruno is filming a talk show and brings out his little African baby, OJ, and talks about how he swapped him for an iPod, a few people look shocked, but others are laughing. They get that this is all a joke. And it's why when Bruno starts making out with his lover in an ultimate-fighting octagon, the audience boos and throws chairs: it's not that they're homophobes, it that they know they're being fucked with.
Bruno isn't a wide-eyed innocent, he's deliberately offensive and sexually aggressive with every straight man he meets. It doesn't make you a homophobe to be uncomfortable when another man tells you you have blow-job lips. It doesn't make you a homophobe to get upset when a man pulls you into a bedroom, locks the door, lights some candles, and drops his pants. It doesn't make you a homophobe to be angry when a naked man asks to share your tent while he's holding a fistful of condoms. Borat showed us the ugly side of American cultural ignorance. Bruno shows us that straight men don't like it when other men try to seduce them. What a shock.
I'm not going to lie, I did laugh. Like I said of Borat, just viewed as a straight comedy it was still pretty damn funny, and the same goes for Bruno. It had its moments. It was a comedy. But I went in expecting magic. I went in expecting another Borat. And now I realize, Sacha Baron Cohen used up his one good idea in 2006, and Borat's never coming back. And I'm sad.
The really tragic thing is that Borat was one of the funniest movies of the decade. It was a fucking work of genius. I thought Cohen was a fucking genius for making it. But this mediocre farce means that Borat was a once-in-a-lifetime achievement, Cohen's one brilliant idea, never to be repeated again. For the same reason Milos Foreman should have just quit while he was ahead right after Deerhunter (i.e. before Heaven's Gate), Sacha Baron Cohen should have just quit showbusiness after making Borat.
He might have starved to death, but at least he wouldn't have to deal with me bitchslapping him in my blog (which has been viewed over 30 times).
Borat worked on a a couple levels. As a straight comedy, it worked because the jokes and the set-pieces were hilarious. It could've been totally scripted and it would have been a decent comedy. But what made Borat comic gold was the fact that it wasn't scripted, it was just Cohen unleashing his annoying, clueless, overfriendly foreign persona on regular folks and filming their honest reactions. And by doing that, Borat gave the American people a much-needed lampooning.
Borat's antics were almost a litmus test for human decency and common sense. The nice Jewish couple who take the anti-Semitic Borat into their home? Pass. The drunken frat boys who want to know if women are slaves in Kazakhstan? Fail. The weatherman who can't stop laughing as Borat interrupts his live broadcast to say goodbye? Pass. The comedy instructor who listens to Borat talk about his retarded brother in a cage, and then says no one in America would find that funny? Fail.
But that's not how Bruno works. Cohen tries to use the same recipe here, but the ingredients are totally different. Bruno is a vapid, self-obsessed, supergay Austria fashion designer. This character doesn't work because A)his vapidness and self-obsession are totally overshadowed by his supergayness, so that's the only thing anyone really notices about the character, and B)no sane person could ever believe that this is a real guy.
Watching Borat, you're not laughing at him so much as you're laughing at the people he meets for being dumb enough to be fooled by his insulting foreign caricature. But in Bruno, hardly anyone falls for it, and you get the sense that those who seem to be are really just playing along. That's why when Bruno is filming a talk show and brings out his little African baby, OJ, and talks about how he swapped him for an iPod, a few people look shocked, but others are laughing. They get that this is all a joke. And it's why when Bruno starts making out with his lover in an ultimate-fighting octagon, the audience boos and throws chairs: it's not that they're homophobes, it that they know they're being fucked with.
Bruno isn't a wide-eyed innocent, he's deliberately offensive and sexually aggressive with every straight man he meets. It doesn't make you a homophobe to be uncomfortable when another man tells you you have blow-job lips. It doesn't make you a homophobe to get upset when a man pulls you into a bedroom, locks the door, lights some candles, and drops his pants. It doesn't make you a homophobe to be angry when a naked man asks to share your tent while he's holding a fistful of condoms. Borat showed us the ugly side of American cultural ignorance. Bruno shows us that straight men don't like it when other men try to seduce them. What a shock.
I'm not going to lie, I did laugh. Like I said of Borat, just viewed as a straight comedy it was still pretty damn funny, and the same goes for Bruno. It had its moments. It was a comedy. But I went in expecting magic. I went in expecting another Borat. And now I realize, Sacha Baron Cohen used up his one good idea in 2006, and Borat's never coming back. And I'm sad.
