Bruno

Director: Larry Charles
Writers: Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Dan Mazar, Jeff Schaffer
Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen
Release Date: July 10, 2009
Length: 1 hour 21 minutes

It has been three years and we all have been very patient. But was it worth the wait? It depends on how much silliness you can tolerate. Then again, Borat was pretty ridiculous as well. After gay, Austrian, wannabe model Bruno is dumped by his boyfriend, he decides to travel with his assistant, Lutz, to Hollywood to become a star. When he gets there and interviews with an agent, he realizes his show is going to be a lot harder to make then he thought. So when that plan fails he tries different strategies that other celebrities use. Like starting a charity, or adopting – actually trading – an African baby, or even having a scandalous sex tape. I was afraid that Bruno would try and be another Borat, but I was glad to find differences. Unfortunately these differences were that Borat was all real and improvised and Bruno was mostly scripted. It was definitely not as funny as Borat, but still generated many laughs. You can tell that quite a lot of Bruno is not actually real, which makes it less believable and less amusing to watch. In Borat you knew everything was real, so you would laugh harder thinking “this actually happened? He actually just did that?” But unfortunately in Bruno I didn’t know whether to laugh or not because I wasn’t sure if it was fake or real. Borat had its own originality. Bruno took a different turn, but unfortunately many people know who Sacha Baron Cohen is, and who all of his characters are. Despite my disappointment, I still found myself laughing throughout almost every scene. Sacha Baron Cohen is obviously a comedic god and knows what he is doing. You might find yourself thinking half the time, “this is completely ridiculous” or “why did I pay to see this?” as I had those thoughts as well. But I can assure I was almost in tears because I was laughing so hard in the final scene, before the credits. Bruno is definitely worth the watch, but you might be slightly disappointed.