Brüno (2009) review

Sacha Baron Cohen, following the great success of his pseudo-documentary Borat, tries to pull of the same stunt using a different persona, that of "Brüno," an over-the-top gay Austrian fashion journalist. The reason Borat worked was because it seemed like a new step in comedy, an actually successful satire of American mores and political ignorance that also employed extreme visual humor - this is basically the same joke pounded to death. I think the fact that a lot of it is staged has much to do with it - Cohen is now a superstar and easily recognized, so he can no longer operate incognito, making the obviously planned moments, like the Richard Bey show segment and the Straight Dave Cage Make-Out more desperate than funny. It lacks wit and insight - only a handful of moments really get at deeper issues (the sequence where he interviews the parents of very young children and tells the mothers their kids need to lose weight and/or be hung on a cross) - and could have spent more time really exploring the fashion scene and even the gay community, but Cohen and Charles would rather break out the dildos and/or take the 'mincing queer' routine to, oh, Alabama. Brüno makes Borat seem multi-dimensional.