My review of Brüno contains spoilers. To include them goes against principles I have practiced since becoming a critic 18 years ago. Sacha Baron Cohen's film has just one purpose. It is to hurt people and to offend.
The exception to my rule is deserved.
In his second feature length flick Cohen (Borat: Cultural Leanings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan) pretends to be Brüno, a homosexual Hungarian wanna-be celebrity willing to do anything to become famous.
Put a triple exclamation point after the word "anything." That includes demonstrations of what some consider offensive sexual practices, or at the very least are practices that should be left behind closed doors. Male and female nudity are displayed in ways that also could be considered distasteful.
Cohen is a force of nature. He's unrelenting, unstoppable and -- sadly for someone with so much comic potential -- unbearable. Cohen is Candid Camera on steroids. His films are quasi-documentaries where he carefully picks innocent victims, pushes his way into their lives, places them in embarrassing no-win situations and then goes for the jugular.
As he did in Borat, Cohen has the most "fun" picking on unsuspecting celebrities. Cohen goes after Harrison Ford who blows him off beautifully, American Idol's clueless and gullible Paula Abdul and politician and former presidential candidate Ron Paul who gets justifiably angry when he is victim of the most vicious prank of all.
Brüno pokes fun at gays, gay sex, heterosexual swingers and ultimate fighting fans. Satirizing Madonna, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and other celebrities, Cohen upsets blacks when he claims to have traded an iPod for an African baby, gives the boy the provocative name "Gayby" and then brags about it to an audience on a TV talk show. Bruno crashes and ruins fashion shows, attacks and belittles fundamentalist Christians, Jews and Muslims and -- no kidding -- an Islamic terrorist.
No stoop is too low for a Cohen gag.
Cohen gets yucks at the expense of his prey, some quality camera time and forces us to laugh. Uncomfortably. Set up the comedy correctly and we'll even laugh at things that normally offend. Cohen knows that and uses our all-too-human weaknesses against us. That, too, is offensive.
Moon
In the future Earth's energy crisis is solved by the discovery of an unidentified metal found on the dark side of the moon. It is so pure that only one mining station is needed to get the ore to Earth and just one person and a computer run the place.
The man is Sam Bell. He's signed up for a three-year stint that is a couple of weeks from ending. His companion is GERTY, an omnipresent computer programmed to anticipate and meet his every need. Sam has cabin fever big time and is struggling with his sanity.
An early twist in Moon means I can't tell you much about the story. Though it's a dark drama, most of the fun for you and for the actors is found in the plot pivot.
Duncan Jones -- son of rock singer David Bowie -- directs and developed the story. He and first-time screenwriter Nathan Parker pack Moon with excellent special effects and give Sam Rockwell's Bell and Kevin Spacey, voicing the computer, a creative, complicated and, best of all, intelligent plot to play with.
No one does quirky better than Rockwell (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) and he bounces off Spacey's dry menace perfectly. Their fun is yours.
Fans of sci-fi should not miss Moon. See it early because it won't be here long. Nonfans of the genre ought to give this one a shot too. ◗ Have a movie comment? Contact Mr. Movie at his blog at:tricityherald.com/arts/mrmovie.
