I've never been smacked in the face with a dick, but I imagine the experience is a lot like watching Brüno. The first 15 minutes of the movie is a penis shock-and-awe campaign, with a pink bunny-costume dick, a dick on the end of a stick and a talking dick that shouts "Brüno!" out of its peehole. That's in addition to the many items — dicks, dildos, champagne bottles, etc. — going in and out of assholes obscured only by a little black dot. If there is one word to describe Brüno, it's Cocktastic.
Brüno is the creation of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, the second of his Da Ali G Show personae to get the feature film treatment after Borat landed in 2006. Borat was indeed hilarious, and established a template that is recycled in Brüno: Introduce the eccentric star in his native surroundings — Borat, Kazakhstan; Brüno, the world of European fashion — then force him into the wild and film the resulting culture clash when he interacts with the local dupes (largely in America).
After the cock carpet-bombing of the first few minutes, Brüno's plot kicks in as the flamboyant European model/TV host is exiled to Los Angeles with his faithful assistant Lutz (Gustaf Hammarsten) following an unfortunate incident on the catwalk in Milan. Brüno wants to be a star in America, so he hires an agent (seemingly real and completely unaware of who he's dealing with), gets some anal bleaching and screens the pilot of his new TV show for an unsuspecting focus group. Their opinions are not kind.
His TV show a failure, and unable to make peace in the Middle East (no, really), Brüno goes to plan C: Adopt an African baby. Hey, if it worked for Madonna, right? Of course, Maddy never took her kids on The Richard Bey Show (think Jerry Springer, but in Texas). At first, the largely African-American audience is sympathetic to Brüno (it is tough being a single dad), but he quickly reveals he's gay and they turn on him a bit. Then he brings out his black child — wearing a "Gayby" T-shirt, no less — and the audience goes wild. The scene keeps building (oh my God, the photos!), and crescendos with Brüno screaming and fighting with security as social services takes the baby away.
I highlight this segment because it works as a microcosm for the whole movie. It's very funny, but thinking back I'm a little fuzzy as to who is in on the joke. I'm positive the studio audience is clueless, but I'm not so sure about Bey or his staff. I admire the way Cohen mixes in racial politics and continually pushes the scene, but the ending feels forced. I guess the comedian wanted to get across that Brüno's not such a bad guy and he really cared about the kid. The same kid he'd had shipped to America in a hole-poked cardboard box. Uh huh.
Borat's target was the American jingoism of the Bush years, but Brüno has its sights set on homophobia, and the film is stunning in how far it will push the audience for a laugh. After a string of events I'll allow you to discover for yourself, Brüno journeys to Alabama to try and shed his gayness. In a series of vignettes, he enlists in the Army, visits a religious guy who specializes in curing homosexuality (Brüno tells the preacher he has "blowjob lips") and hangs out at a swingers' party in a scene that would be outright porn were it not for the black boxes obscuring the action. That the party scene ends in an apparent homage to The Blair Witch Project is just gravy.
There's an ass-load more, of course; much of it hilarious, some of it hit or miss. I suppose that's to be expected. If I have one main quibble with Brüno it's that the plot is flimsy at best, and exists only to string together the various set pieces of Brüno horrifying the normal folk. Borat worked as a coherent whole with a plot (simple to be sure) that you could follow, and was a better movie for it.
But still, there's much to like here. You have to admire a movie that pokes and prods at social taboos this fiercely, and all in the name of comedy. Cohen is a gifted comedian, both physically (his "ghost blowjob" must be seen to be believed) and in his ability to think on his feet. The director is Borat-helmer Larry Charles, and he uses a variety of techniques (from switching film stocks to clever but manipulative editing) to enhance the feeling that you're watching real people interact in a real way. Ultimately, Brüno's not quite as seamless as Borat, but it's still a worthwhile (and very funny) experience in its own right.
This article appears in Jul 15-21, 2009.