Bruno: The 82-minute Headache

Bruno: The 82-minute Headache
By Pete Misiak
WXYZ Entertainment Reporter


Anybody got an aspirin?

I have a dull ache just over my eyes that won't go away. It's directly related to the movie I just saw, Bruno, the story of a gay Austrian fashionista's assault on Fashion Week in Milan, the Middle East, Hollywood and rural America.

Claiming he wants to be "the biggest Austrian superstar since Hitler," Bruno is host of Funkyzeit Mit Bruno, a trend-setting Austrian TV fashion show. But when his show is canceled after a backstage debacle (a worthy target), he loses his lover, Diesel, and his direction. How can he become famous now?

Maybe by making peace in the Middle East, traipsing around Jerusalem in Hasidic short shorts (Hasidic Jews chase him). Perhaps an "accessory" African baby adoption (a "gayby") is the answer -- watch passengers' jaws drop when the infant is collected from a box in the airport luggage carousel.



If there was genuine humor in many of the scenes, it has been well and truly squeezed out by the time they made it to the screen. Bruno, like his predecessors Borat and Ali G, is a character originally created for TV by British writer and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. Like Borat, his feature film debut, Bruno involves a visit to America. And, like Borat, the comedy of exposure and embarrassment in Bruno comes from his impact on an unsuspecting public.

Perhaps the Bruno persona is not as malleable as Borat; he's certainly less likeable on any level, and his twee mannerisms sit astride a bloated ego which has never been fed with anything to justify it. The use of ordinary people (and some staged sequences) doesn't help; these scenes seem exploitative and/or fake.

When Bruno arrives in Hollywood, he attempts to launch a celebrity interview show, with initial guests Paula Abdul and La Toya Jackson. (In light of Michael Jackson's death, Universal removed the footage of La Toya Jackson, which includes a scene of Bruno trying to get the King of Pop's phone number.) One suspected "real" moment has Bruno stalking Harrison Ford and being angrily told by the star to buzz off, in rather less decorous terms.

The movie takes a fateful turn toward the uncomfortable (from which it never entirely recovers) with a "gotcha" sequence in which Ron Paul, the libertarian-minded recent presidential aspirant, is played for a sap. When Paul realizes he's been set up, he storms out and furiously calls Bruno some less-than-flattering names, which will no doubt rankle some of his erstwhile supporters.

Bruno does have a higher technical quality than Borat, which counts for something, I guess.

I'm sorry. I'm going to have to stop now. I have a terrible headache.


Bruno
Rated: R
Running Time: 82 minutes


Pete Misiak is an award-winning news anchor and reporter at WJR-AM 760 and is also a member of WXYZ.com's Web Team. A former Big Band singer with Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians, Pete earned membership into Actors' Equity Association in 1982 and has appeared in over 60 productions as an actor and performer.