Bruno
| Year: | 2009 |
| Studio: | Universal |
| Director: | Larry Charles |
| Producer: | Sacha Baron Cohen/Jay Roach |
| Writer: | Sacha Baron Cohen |
| Cast: | Sacha Baron Cohen, Bono, Paula Abdul, Elton John, Slash |
Borat: Part II in everything but name. I (along with every other film critic and fan) wondered how far Sacha Baron Cohen could take this modus operandi before everybody would know who he was, cutting his own method off at the knees.
Indeed, Bruno feels less spontaneous and more staged than Borat did. For the most part it's just as funny, even if most of the humour relies on innuendo and occasional gross-out.
Once again it's hard to imagine the breathless stupidity of some people not to realise a joke's being played on them as Cohen plays an Austrian fashion journalist so squealing gay he's beyond caricature.
When a stunt at Milan fashion week sees him fired, he decides to travel to America to be a celebrity, his only criteria for fame that he finds it no matter what the method.
While enjoyable, the shtick might indeed have run its course now, and Cohen will have to earn his milk money in amusing cameos and support parts like those of Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.