Bruno, Sacha BARON Cohen’s new stab at outraging the entire world, suffers from the weight of expectation. Partially it was always going to have difficulty replicating the seemingly out of nowhere shock tactics of Borat, and lack the candidness of relative anonymity he had whilst making that. We get the schtick, so no matter what the subject (and you have never seen as many penises as this film has) it would always feel a little second hand.
But that is not the expectation problem I have specifically with Bruno. Seeing it in a hugely packed cinema, there was a buzz of anticipation in the room. The Universal logo came up, with an umlaut – this is one of those special movies where they get to mess with the studio logo. And in the background the gentle sounds of Nessaja drifted up.
Always lived my life alone,
Been searching for the place called home.
I know that I’ve been cold as ice,
Ignored the dreams, too many lies.
And I realised no matter how good this film was going to be (not bad being my ultimate assessment), it was never going to beat this moment.
Somewhere deep inside, Somewhere deep inside me,
I found … the child I used to be
And I know that it’s not too late
Never too late…
The heart rending strings and beautiful voice, a bizarre way to start a candid camera style expose of homophobia and lots and lots of full frontal nudity. I briefly stole a look at the audience, responding to this surprisingly stirring intro and I swear I saw a few tears.
3 AM!
The painted cow !
Hiaaaaa!!
You ain’t stoppin` us now !
Wonderful human beings
Yeah ! I am the Junglist soldier.
No film could overcome such a wonderful moment. So if Bruno teaches us one thing (and it teaches us more than one thing about penises let alone life) is that if you are going to put Scooter on the soundtrack, save it til the end credits.
(NOTE: In proof that Sacha Baron Cohen leaves nothing to chance or serendipity in his films, he didn’t just use any of these commuter scooters for work, note that the mobility Scooter seen in the picture above is indeed a model called Bruno, or to be precise the Bruno Super Club 300! For more details see here.)