Bruno delivers some more shtick

REVIEWED BY ADAM KAMIEN

DUST off your best D&G thong and Nair your kugelsacks, “the biggest film about a hot white guy since The Passion of the Christ” is upon us. In case you have been living in a cave, the film, of course, is Bruno, and the title character is Jewish entertainer Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest incarnation -— remember Borat and Ali G before him -— an impossibly gay, anti-Semitic, promiscuous, Austrian fashion reporter.

Following an unfortunate incident involving a suit made entirely of Velcro at a runway show, Bruno is unceremoniously dumped from his own TV series about fashion and is “schwarz-listed” from Vienna’s hottest nightspots and glitterati events.

Forlorn, Bruno heads to LA to become a celebrity, with his former assistant’s assistant in toe. Once in LA, Bruno hatches a series of harebrained schemes to get famous quickly. He tries to launch a TV show, which is part pornography, part Parkinson; he accessorises with an African baby, tries to broker peace in the Middle East and attempts to become a heterosexual “like Tom Cruise”.

There’s something to offend everyone in Bruno, including pygmy porn, fetishism, anal bleaching, dildo fights, a talking penis and Holocaust jokes.

Like 2006’s Borat, Bruno combines mockumentary narrative with his set-ups of unwitting celebrities, clergymen, rednecks, politicians and plain, ordinary folk. It is the latter where the humour lies, but these set-pieces don’t always fit seamlessly within the narrative arc, although more often than not they are thigh-slappingly hilarious.

The film does suffer slightly from not having a fresh format -— for all intents and purposes it is the same as Borat, but with a different stereotype at its centre -— but Baron Cohen ups the ante, serving up more vulgarity, more peak-through-your-fingers, agape awkwardness and even less regard for his own personal safety.

It’s offensive, grossly inappropriate, and laugh-out-loud funny for the most part, although it does fall away towards the end as the film meanders to its star-studded, but unimpressive conclusion.

While Baron Cohen’s brand of rattlesnake poking still elicits laughs, getting reactions out of some of the bigots and religious zealots he picks on is like fishing at a trout farm. In fact, sometimes it’s easier to sympathise with the misguided souls Bruno is bating than Bruno himself.

The format is fun, but it’s not cutting-edge any more and while the film suffers slightly from this, there are enough uproariously hilarious moments to keep it humming along nicely.