GRAPHIC sex involving adult novelties and a dwarf. Bleaching where the sun don’t shine. A talking member. And a demented quest to become, as the protagonist puts it, “the biggest gay movie star since Schwarzenegger.”
PHOTOS: ‘Bruno’ On The Red Carpet
“Bruno,” gonzo comic Sacha Baron Cohen’s long-awaited, envelope-pushing follow-up to the brilliant “Borat,” is probably more gut-bustingly funny than anything else out there right now. Its NC-17 antics, which somehow got an R, make a mockery of the movie ratings system.
Still, it’s less hilarious than its predecessor, which I awarded four stars.
For all the laughs — and they are many — there’s a certain been-there, done-that feeling to “Bruno,” though its main character is a hugely narcissistic Austrian fashionista rather than a naive television personality from Kazakhstan.
The humor is more mean-spirited and sometimes forced, a few bits don’t work at all, and there’s an inescapable feeling that director Larry Charles, returning from “Borat,” has staged some scenes with scripted actors serving as Bruno’s victims.
The story line follows a similar pattern to “Borat,” with Bruno sacked from his Austrian program “Funkyzeit” and dumped by his energetic Asian dwarf boyfriend after wreaking havoc at New York’s Fashion Week in a Velcro suit.
Bruno takes his act to Hollywood, where he interviews a supposedly unwitting Paula Abdul, who draws the line at sitting on a naked Mexican man. (La Toya Jackson was edited out on the day of her brother’s death in the movie’s sole concession to good taste.)
When his talk show is savaged by a focus group, Bruno tries his hand at acting — deciding that if he’s going to become a big star he’s going to have become straight like “Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Kevin Spacey.”
“Bruno” mincingly walks a fine line in exposing homophobic behavior and perpetuating wince-inducing gay stereotypes. Not to get all PC on you, but the straight, outrageously dressed Baron Cohen camps it up in what has legitimately been criticized as swishy gay equivalent of blackface.
Sometimes Baron Cohen manages to do both at the same time — notably in an uproarious but disturbing sequence where a predatory Bruno tries to seduce libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul and basically entraps him into anti-gay behavior.
Paul’s ugly reaction appears authentic — as does that of a Hollywood superstar who understandably tells Bruno to “f – – – off.” You have to wonder exactly how real Bruno’s encounters with redneck hunters and a whip-wielding female swinger are, though they are quite funny.
The sequence I found least funny had him adopting an African baby he names OJ (and dresses in a “gayby” T-shirt) and facing a hostile African-American audience when he talks about his unique approach to parenting on a talk show hosted by ’80s relic Richard Bey.
Stage mothers and fathers who will do anything to see their children in a film make for the comic high point. One readily consents to liposuction for her preschooler. Another, informed his offspring would be expected to dress in a Nazi uniform and push a wheelbarrow carrying a Jewish baby into an oven, calmly responds, “that’s fine, as long as he gets the gig.”
Too much of “Bruno” is déja vu all over again.
Once again, there’s a minister who “cures” homosexuality; Bruno and his smitten assistant Lutz (Gustaf Hammarsten) fleeing a hotel in bondage gear; and in place of the famous rodeo sequence in “Borat,” Bruno facing a chair-tossing crowd that doesn’t appreciate his triple-Lutz gay twist to a cage wrestling match.
Baron Cohen is an extremely talented actor and comedian, but “Bruno” exhausts a vein of shock humor he has been strip mining since “Da Ali G Show.” It’s good for more big laughs this time, but it’s time for him to move on.