"Bruno" is... something

One of the good things about being friends with a film critic is getting to go to screenings of films that haven’t yet been released. So last night I went to a late-late screening of “Bruno,” the new film from the former Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen. The nicest thing I can say about was that at least it was free.

I really admire Cohen’s ability to stay in character, as well as the physical chances he takes. There’s no denying that he’s fearless. But merely being outrageous isn’t necessarily funny. Too often, I thought that “Bruno” went way past what would’ve been funny, crossing some invisible line into Eye-roll Land. For instance, early in the film, after Bruno’s screw-up at Milan Fashion Week makes him a persona non grata, he laments that “For the second time in a century, the world had turned on Austria’s greatest man, just because he tried to do something new.” Everyone in the theatre knew he was talking about Hitler, and it’s a groan-inducing “OMG, what an idiot” moment. But then a few minutes later, Cohen makes the same reference, only this time mentioning Hitler by name. Dude, we already got it.

I’ve written before that funny is a club, and you’re either in it or you’re not. When you lower the bar of a joke so that everyone from my 83-year-old grandfather to those “Jaywalking” people who don’t know who the president is can see the gears cranking, I think you lose something. That’s how parts of “Borat” felt for me, and that’s how 90 percent of “Bruno” felt, too.

Other observations: I’m shocked that this movie only got an R rating. If “Brokeback Mountain” had been half this explicit, it would’ve been NC-17. But I guess as long as gay characters are just putting on a minstrel show, anything goes. The plot is a direct rip-off of “Borat,” only even more episodic. “Bruno” can’t decide who it wants to satirize – snotty Euro-trash fashionistas? Hollywood fame-whores? Allegedly homophobic good ol’ boys? I was just left wondering what the purpose of it all was, other than to gross people out.

Unlike in the best parts of “Borat,” here Cohen doesn’t give his (possibly) unwilling man-on-the-street co-stars the breathing room they need to do the truly hilarious stuff (like the frat-boys complaining to Borat about how they didn’t get to own slaves anymore). Instead, it’s all him doing progressively more over-the-top stuff until he gets a reaction. That’s not ripping the veil from Americans’ deepest motives. It’s manipulation, and it doesn’t give us anything new. Wow, an Alabama hunter will freak out if a naked guy tries to come into his tent in the middle of the night. No sh*t! So would I. Point?

“Bruno” didn’t offend me. I just thought it was kind of pointless.