No matter how many times I yell at my kitten that he looks like a donut with whiskers, I haven't yet seen him jump on the Soloflex.
That's because some things are virtually invulnerable to criticism. I can tell my girlfriend that she needs to pick after herself until I'm blue in the face, but that's not going to undo the stroke. If our last President had a penny for every time he ignored someone who suggested he do something different, then we'd all be little puddles of blood beneath 40 feet of solid copper, so thank heavens he stayed the course.
Certain works of art and entertainment work that way, too, especially the ones that walk the thin line between moronic and inspired. That's when objectivity goes out the window. You could fault Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno for being "crude," but is that really a value judgment? That's more like saying "I am not an aficionado of dildo jokes." So what do us professionals do when faced with a movie that, in many ways, is beyond good and bad? Sneakily mention our girlfriends so no one will get the wrong idea when we come out in favor of a movie full of the gays.
After causing a scene at a fashion show, Cohen's alter ego Bruno is blackballed from the fashion world and kicked off his show.
Cut off from everything he knows, he decides to go to L.A. to become a celebrity, taking with him assistant Gustaf Hammarsten and a customized exercise bike. After Cohen's first gigs don't go down so well, he turns to increasingly desperate measures to achieve his fame.
Like Cohen's Borat, Bruno features a fake character interacting with real people who aren't aware they're being put on. The point isn't immediately obvious: to mess with people for the lulz? To push people past their boundaries (Cohen plays a ragingly gay man) and expose America's dirty underbelly of homophobia? Or to at long last supply us with the hypnotic footage of spinning male members we've all been demanding?
Then again, there's already a Web site devoted to that (don't pretend you don't already know that), so I'm guessing Bruno's shooting for comedic social commentary. Whatever the case, we can rule out story -- the plot is as episodic and disconnected as storytime with grampaw, with only slightly more nudity.
But that's okay, because by and large the bits that make the whole are funny as hell, which if you've never been there is pretty much the funniest place on Earth. Comedians are terrible sinners, you see. So if tasteless, transgressive, smutty humor isn't your thing, be comforted by the fact Cohen will some day get his infernal reward.
This style of embarrassment-based comedy has been the thing for a while now, but you can't accuse Cohen and director Larry Charles of doing the same-ol' same-ol' when at one point Cohen actively lobbies terrorists to kidnap him and insults their leader to his aggrieved face. See, it's not all dick jokes.
The satirical angle's more of a mixed bag. Bruno assaults homophobia and the superficiality of celebrity with a blunderbuss rather than a scalpel, resulting in a lot of noise and some awesome social explosions without landing any mortal wounds. When you're rolling documentary-style, you've got to take what the footage gives you, but with a character this deliberately provocative, it's something of a missed opportunity.
Still, any time a movie's making you laugh this much it's doing something right. Vulgar, anarchistic, aggressive -- does that sound to you like praise or the kind of thing that would make you so disgusted you'd lie in wait for the theater manager, jump out gibbering with a baseball bat, then politely invite him to dinner so you could discuss the definition of "entertainment"?
Make your choice based on that.
Grade: B