Bruno (2009/Universal DVD)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: D     Feature: D

 

 

Sadly every summer since the later 1980s, Hollywood releases three really bad films of distinction and 2009 is no exception.  One is the bad film everyone pays to see (Terminator Salvation this time, though some would say Transformers 2), the expensive one everyone skips (Land Of The Lost) and wacky, unfunny comedy that is beyond unfunny.  Following Love Guru for this prize is Larry Charles’ Bruno (2009), star Sacha Baron Cohen’s train wreck of a non-comedy that should have never been issued on film.

 

He plays the title character, an eccentric gay German man who wants to be famous and will do anything and dare anything to become popular.  He is shallow, dumb and ignorant, but not as much as the many people (some in real life seemingly ambushed like Cohen’s Borat or regular Michael Moore has done to death) he is supposedly wittier than.  It is the Borat formula (it only works once) all over again, but with no point, leaving the film with satire that does not work, an obsession with male genitals that is goofy and an idea of a gay male that is not even dimensional enough to be offensive.

 

Of course, many who actually paid to see this disaster were offended by the tired content or that they paid to see it.  The shock buttons Cohen presses are now expired, especially because the jokes are years late and in the Obama Era, less relevant than ever.  The risk-taking is cardboard and you never believe anything you see, then wonder why name people ever got involved.  At 82 minutes, it is barely feature-length and contrived beyond belief.  Any gay issues are unreal, any critique of big media falls flat and any bashing of the fashion industry is light-years away from Robert Altman’s Ready To Wear (1994), so we get a film that is as if Mike Myers made a gay-variant Dieter/Sprockets film (he almost did one for Universal, ironically) with a script as bad or worse than Love Guru.

 

You have been warned.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is soft throughout from the digital shoot that is even less impressive than Borat, while the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is monophonic at times and too much towards the screen.  The menus are in German until you highlight a choice that converts the word(s) to English and extras include over an hour of extra footage (listed separately as alternative, deleted and extended scenes) that was not included, but is so bad, it is hard to tell how they decided what to keep and what to retain.  There is an enhanced commentary option to view the film where Baron as Baron discusses the film with Director Charles and talent agent Lloyd Robinson interviewing Bruno.

 

That will be for anyone who gets through the film.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo