Oh-oh! The reviews ofBrüno, the latest Sacha Baron Cohen movie, are coming in. By and large, it is not looking good for the Austrian fashion reporter. I am still looking forward to seeing it.
Anthony Lane, The New Yorker:
Brüno is the host of “Funkyzeit,” a very à la mode show on Austrian TV, but is fired after an unfortunate Velcro incident on the catwalk. “For the second time in a century, the vorld has turned on Austria’s greatest man, just because he tried something different,” he says. It’s a lethal line, spinning self-pity out of cretinism, and, at moments like this, with innocence cozying up to indifference, you realize what a savage, Swiftian assault Baron Cohen could, if he put his mind to it, launch at our moral unknowingness. But the line is spoken in voice-over, not as part of a dramatic dialogue, and what the rest of “Brüno” demonstrates, to one’s growing disappointment and dismay, is a vehemently gifted man putting his body to it and leaving his mind behind.
…
You can’t honestly defend your principled lampooning of homophobia when nine out of every ten images that you project onscreen comply with the most threadbare cartoons of gay behavior. A schoolboy who watches a pirated DVD of this film will look at the prancing Austrian and find more, not fewer, reasons to beat up the kid on the playground who doesn’t like girls. There is, on the evidence of this movie, no such thing as gay love; there is only gay sex, a superheated substitute for love, with its own code of vulcanized calisthenics whose aim is not so much to sate the participants as to embarrass onlookers from the straight—and therefore straitlaced—society beyond.
A.O. Scott, The New York Times:
What “Brüno” tries hardest to be, and fails most significantly to become, is a sendup of the empty vanity of celebrity culture. Brüno, in his quest for stardom, encounters and exploits bottom feeders, hangers-on and desperate aspirants for membership in the charmed circle of fame. “Will you look at those dumb losers” is the punch line here, and it sometimes elicits a spasm of shocked laughter.
Still, the arrow of satire flies straighter and lands harder when it is aimed upward, and poking fun at the powerful and the entitled is no longer something Mr. Baron Cohen is inclined to do. Why should he? He’s A-List all the way, showing some leg on the cover of GQ and able to wrangle the likes of Sting, Bono and Snoop Dogg into a music video tacked onto the end of “Brüno.” It’s a pretty clever bit — Snoop’s line about Brüno as “the white Obama” may be the funniest one in the movie — and all the musicians look happy to be playing along with the joke. Good for them. But the joke is on you.
Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal:
“Brüno” is Mr. Baron Cohen’s “Transformers,” a terrible movie that will make tons of money. It’s a disappointment, but also a puzzlement, because its hugely talented star seems to have mislaid the essential ingredients of his trusty formula. “Brüno,” like “Borat,” is a mockumentary, a series of encounters with people who may or may not be in on the basic joke that the whole thing is a put-on. In the first film, most of those encounters were deliciously ambiguous. In the new film, though, many if not most seem to be put-up jobs involving faux victims on the production’s payroll, so what’s the point, apart from mechanical shock and manufactured controversy? One ambush was clearly the real thing, a mirthless encounter with Ron Paul, the Libertarian Texas Representative and former presidential candidate, during which Brüno strips seductively to his skivvies. But the result is only embarrassment. Mr. Paul, disgusted, wants nothing more than to be out of there, and you can’t blame him.
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times:
“Bruno” is a no-holds-barred comedy permitting several holds I had not dreamed of. The needle on my internal Laugh Meter went haywire, bouncing among hilarity, appreciation, shock, admiration, disgust, disbelief and appalled incredulity. Here is a film that is 82 minutes long and doesn’t contain 30 boring seconds. There should be a brief segment at the next Spirit Awards with John Waters conferring the Knighthood of Bad Taste to Sacha Baron Cohen. If he decides to tap Cohen on each shoulder with his sword, I want to have my eyes closed.