Crammed with dildos, wangs, anal bleaching, and even a healthy dollop of schadenfreude, “Brüno” is determinedly outrageous. The last of Sacha Baron Cohen’s trio of iconic characters to headline his own feature film, Brüno is a narcissistic Austrian television fashion show host who craves celebrity, mischief and sex. Based on the Cirque du Soleil-like sex scenes early in the movie with his boyfriend Diesel (Clifford Bañagale), he enjoys theatrical, puckish sex; they indulge with everything short of a melon catapult.
While at first blush the new film is just Borat redux, with both VIPs and the proletariat the unwitting participants in the reporters’ shenanigans, there’s a crucial distinction in the two characters’ motivation. Three years ago, Borat Sagdiyev was the naïve nomadic journalist; his mayhem was an unintended consequence of his exuberance. Brüno, petulant and vain, lusts for the spotlight and wants his pranks to elicit notoriety. He’s a headline grabber; Borat was simply touchy feely. So when Brüno disrupts a Milan runway show in an outfit best described as La Dolce Velcro, he intends to bring the (fashion) house down. Summarily fired from his telly gig and banished by the European jet set, Brüno travels to Los Angeles — along with his assistant’s assistant, Lutz (played by Swedish actor Gustaf Hammarsten) — a city where his narcissism is encouraged and commonplace.
However, the film bogs down on the West Coast. Perhaps it’s because some of Brüno’s targets are just way too easy marks: an oblivious Paula Abdul; a befuddled Ron Paul; and a pair of vacuous charity consultants in dire need of their own telethon. But it may be that reality television, with its voluminous coverage of famous-for-being-famous non-entities, has already unintentionally mined the absurdity and “The Soup” has split it wide open with eviscerating comic contempt. Brüno’s desire for fame feels limp. But his uncensored television pilot, viewed by an actual test audience, is anything but flaccid. And a visit to a psychic so that Brüno can speak to the departed member of Milli Vanilli is an exquisitely excruciating performance of simulated physical comedy.
The more vivid ribbing occurs when he ventures away from L.A., such as the reaction of the stunned Dallas talk show studio audience as Brüno introduces his adopted African baby, or when he interferes during a visit to a barely obscured swingers’ party. Both a hunting trip in Cullman County, Alabama and a trek to the Middle East produce squirm-inducing awkwardness tinged with threat.
But it’s when Cohen introduces the new persona of “Straight Dave” that the film produces its most audacious, compelling and chilling scenario. The camera pans through a ramshackle Arkansas arena as hundreds of rowdy mixed martial arts fans whoop it up. They are tightly wound, lit, and lunge at the camera to scream “Wooooo” with head-cocked menace. Accompanied by two comely female attendants, Cohen strides out from the backstage area as “Straight Dave.” A physical dead ringer for Joe Dirt, the mulleted and handlebar mustached Dave is not Brüno in disguise as much as an alter ego. Entering the caged ring, “Straight Dave” tears off the cropped-Ts of his comely pair to reveal their bikini tops and proclaims into the microphone that he’s “proud to be straight.” He leads the jacked, and possibly coked, arena in a chant of “straight pride,” which sounds eerily like the cadence of “white power.” Then Dave calls out his nemesis, who happens to be Lutz, for battle as he questions his opponent’s manhood. Lutz plaintively enters the ring. They lock in a wrestling stance but suddenly the grappling turns into an embrace and then more. The crowd is apoplectic. There’s no nudity but the intimacy and tenderness spawns a fury. Dudes rush the cage. Cups filled with beer shower the pair. A folding chair slams onto the matted floor. The homophobia is so visceral that it appears to lie somewhere between the throng’s crotch and their conscience. It’s a crowning achievement by Cohen and director Larry Charles (“Borat,” “Religulous”) of comedy as social commentary and an enduring and brutal statement that it’s not simply dicks and balls that fill the homophobe with bigotry but something as mundane as holding hands.
