This must be a worrying time for Sacha Baron Cohen. He has run out of characters. Here he revisits Brüno, the first of his triumvirate of creations that were followed by Ali G and Borat. Using the same format as 2006’s über-hilarious Borat, the film follows the gay, Austrian fashion journalist as he tries to become a superstar in America, freaking out the Bible Belt as he goes.
Turns out it is quite easy to shock the Bible Best by being very camp. Who knew? As with his other characters, Baron Cohen is playing on people’s stereotypes whilst putting them into embarrassing situations. He is an extremely intelligent and funny man, so of course these outrageous situations make you laugh, but a few of them go a bit too far and make you squirm (cf. the scene where Brüno comes on to Republican Congressman Ron Paul).
Sometimes he does highlight the huge amount of homophobia in society (he is actually attacked a few times), which has worth in and of itself, but equally gay people may be upset because a lot of the humour is really about Brüno’s unusual dress sense and sex life.
The trouble is, the original idea behind Brüno was not to make people feel uncomfortable about his sexuality, but to show how stupid people in fashion are. He used to go to fashion shows and make people say the most ridiculous, grandiose statements about the importance of their clothes and generally showed them to be awful human beings. The most successful bits of the film stick with this and deal with the crazy world of fashion and celebrity (the twin charity consultants spring to mind; what planet are they from?).
It may have been too big a leap to make such a stupid character from such a stupid world do something profound, but this film is still stupidly funny. Not as successful as Borat, then, but definitely worth seeing. The question is: what will Sacha do next?
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