Bruno always felt very much like the third and lesser character when he made his debut on The Ali G Show. Squashed between the title character and Borat, the sketches involving the gay Austrian fashionista often felt like filler material. Unfortunately, much the same can be said about his big screen outing.
There are a few reasons for this. Ali G and Borat, for all of their faults and ignorances, were likeable characters. Bruno is not. He's a very annoying man who it would be very hard to imagine spending any amount of time with. Secondly, Sacha Baron Cohen's previous characters had some vestige of truth buried somewhere in them: Ali G really could have been a character from the Staines Massive; Borat really might have been a Kazakh reporter. Bruno, however, is as one-dimensional as they come.
The targets here are also soft: the film follows more or less exactly the same format as Borat (Bruno attempts to find fame by criss-crossing America until he lands in Hollywood and attempts to launch a career as a celebrity chat-show host). Instead of the hairy assistant he has a dopey Scandinavian following him around. Scenes which have been previously set up take place with an air of improvisation about them, but there is definitely more of a feeling this time around that a lot of what we are seeing is highly manufactured.
When Bruno and his assistant put on a 'man-slam' wrestling show in the Deep South, it's inevitable that the invited audience (pumped by free tickets and cheap beer) will react by going into a frenzy. When he traps the Presidential candidate Ron Paul in a room and starts to undress, it's inevitable Paul will flee. Whether he causes mayhem at a fashion show, on a local TV talk show or in front of network TV executives, it all feels like we have seen it before. The reason is that we have, only the last time around it was a lot funnier.
The film seemed to raise some chuckles at the crowded screening I attended, and two twentysomething girls sitting near me confessed to loving it. Thanks to the publicity machine Bruno will find an audience, though not one as huge as Borat. The most interesting question that remains is to see what the talented Baron Cohen will do next, having now used all of his public personas.
Paul Hurley
