Cohen's ‘Borat’ follow-up raunchy, downright funny

“Bruno” is Sacha Baron Cohen’s follow-up to “Borat,” which is too bad. If “Bruno” had come first it would have been better.

For one thing, Cohen couldn’t be accused of repeating himself. The movies use the same framework. Bruno, like Borat, is a dim European with an outrageous accent (German this time) naively wandering America. The character’s quest, Hollywood fame in this case, becomes a loose excuse to introduce a series of “Candid Camera”/“Punk’d” sketches where Cohen interacts with various unfortunate souls who believe Bruno is a real person.

Moreover, if “Bruno” hadn’t followed “Borat” Cohen and director Larry Charles wouldn’t try so energetically to top the original film’s outrageousness. “Borat’s” most notorious moment was the scene where two naked men wrestled in a hotel room and later the lobby. “Bruno” features more of the same. Much, much more. The first reel delivers a barrage of scandalous sexual humor and copious amounts of male nudity. The shock for the sake of shock grows tiresome by the final reel.

Yet “Bruno” has one crucial element “Borat” lacked, a satirical point of view. “Borat” was largely an exercise in humiliation, Cohen playing his interview subjects for fools whether they deserved it or not. In “Bruno” Cohen sets his sights on ideas behind the hapless interview subjects. Cohen isn’t consistent – at the halfway point he switches targets from the fatuousness of celebrity worship to homophobia and bigotry – but at least he makes a statement of greater import than “It’s easy to mock people who don’t recognize me from ‘Da Ali G Show.’”

As the film opens, Bruno is living in Vienna (“The coolest city in Austria.”) where he hosts a fashion show on national television. Soon (though not quite soon enough) Bruno loses his gig and decides to rebound by moving to Los Angeles and becoming Hollywood’s biggest gay superstar.

Bruno louses up an audition for the TV show “Medium,” and his celebrity interview show fails when he scares off Paula Abdul (though not before she sits on a Mexican gardener pressed into duty as her chair, whereupon Bruno asks her about her humanitarian work).
When traditional routes toward celebrity prove too difficult, Bruno tries to become famous the way Paris Hilton did, by making a sex tape. With Ron Paul. The following sequence gets a big laugh for Cohen’s audacity at luring the Conservative Republican into a hotel room, but mostly we share Paul’s embarrassment and can’t blame him for bolting when Cohen sheds his pants.

Other outlandish schemes follow. Bruno tries to bring peace to the Middle East by singing a “We Are the World” parody to Israelis and Palestinians who look like they would rather sign a treaty than listen to another verse. Finally, Bruno realizes he cannot be a movie star unless he is straight, so he places himself in the hands of a pair of actual ministers who call themselves “gay converters.”

Here “Bruno” belatedly finds its purpose, with a character who is little more than an assemblage of gay stereotypes confronting a series of homophobes. Cohen’s bizarre approach exposes not only the ugliness of prejudice, but its ridiculousness.
As a way to deprogram himself, Bruno goes hunting with three rugged men. At a campfire he says, “Look at the four of us – we’re just like the ‘Sex and the City’ girls.”

“No we are not!” one hunter declares. Throughout the movie Cohen fearlessly taunts his subjects, but during this sequence you wonder if he’ll get himself shot. That raises the biggest problem I have with Cohen’s films. I find it impossible to watch them without wondering how much is staged and how many of the interviews are genuine. Once filming wrapped, I wonder how Universal’s legal team persuaded these people to sign release forms. Are Paula Abdul and Ron Paul exempt because they’re public figures? Do the bystanders not mind that they come across as morons, hypocrites and bigots as long as they’re paid to appear in a major motion picture? This is especially mind-boggling when you consider the participants at a swingers’ party who don’t hesitate to perform unconventional sex acts for the camera.

Which leads to the wildest thing about “Bruno,” that it got away with an R rating. At least a third of the movie is more explicit and raunchy than the few seconds that threatened Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut” with an NC-17 rating. Maybe this, too, is part of Cohen’s satirical plan, to prove what a joke the American ratings system has become.