The Case for Boratio

There is no doubt that Sasha Baron Cohen is a scene stealer. The man loves to ham things up remarkably and while in Borat, he pushed the boundaries of taste with his bold shamelessness, in Bruno, it seems the man must have had his inhibitions surgically removed to perform half the acts he does, even in simulation.

However, the “charm” for me of Borat was not the lead character, but rather the reactions of those who encountered the Khazakstani reporter, seeing how much they could feign politeness by his improper behaviour, and to what outlandish statements they would agree with or state in this presence of this fairly misogynistic and racist person, especially knowing that they were being video taped at the time.

Bruno follows in Borat’s footsteps, though upping the offensive factor exponentially. The lead character is not a reporter in search of Pamela Anderson, but rather a failed Austrian fashionista in search of stardom in the USA, by any means necessary. But that shift in focus also brings a shift in perspective: a lot (too much?) of Bruno follows the fictional story of Bruno himself, the scene-setting and unreal interactions between him and his companions, rather than observing the reactions of those watching them.

Knowing that these characters are fictional made it easier for me to accept (it not always watch) some of the more… outrageous incidents as obvious shock factor 7 attempts (though these have apparently driven some people from the cinema, and I can definitely see why). But that knowledge also rendered those scenes somewhat uninteresting, the fact these things were pitched at me to push my buttons making me feel somewhat like a part of the social experiment I had just come to witness. It felt like the film was throwing things at me, daring me to walk out or be polite, to make me feel as perhaps those “subjects” actually involved in the film might have felt. The scenes also made me appreciate the character of Bruno less than perhaps I would have otherwise, the outrageousness we were seeing was not necessarily what the people were seeing at the time, thereby dulling the strength of the reactions of the “real people” in that, through what I had been shown, I had probably got there first and was thinking the same thing. It may have been done deliberately to allow the film makers to “cut” longer scenes where Bruno encounters the average public, so that all they really needed to show was the part where they finally get offended by Bruno’s antics.

There are still some classic encounters, though all are woefully short and the background disappointingly unexplored. The clueless PR specialists are given super brief screen time, though they appear to be quite successful in whatever it is they actually do; the hunting party folk are not really allowed to have personalities; and there must have been a lot more funny stuff to the Middle East peace talks that would have been more deserving of screen time than the final celebrity singalong.

But mainly, Bruno is designed to offend everyone and everything, and, disappointingly, though perhaps not unsurprisingly, to take centre stage.

Verdict: Bruno will occasionally make you laugh, but mainly it will shock and offend. And the shock to offense ratio will determine whether you can last the distance, or even enjoy this at all. I was more shocked than offended, but even then, I will just give this film 4 milis out of 10 vanilis. An opportunity squandered…