Brüno – Blu-ray Review

By Frankie Dees Nov 17, 2009, 0:14 GMT

Oscar® nominee and Golden Globe® winner Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat, Da Ali G Show and Talladega Nights) brings you the comedy that has started more conversations, generated more controversy and dared to go further than ever before! As brüno travels the world in search of fame, everyone he encounters — celebrities, politicians, Hasidic Jews, terrorists and cage fighters — becomes a stepping-stone to stardom, with hilarious results! So prepare yourself ...more

Shock-meister Sacha Baron Cohen is back with ‘Bruno’, an intermittently funny, always disturbing pic that follows his ‘flamboyant’ Austrian fashion-show host to the game American shores to wreak some more boundary-pushing, ‘Borat’-like havoc. 

You have to marvel at the lengths Cohen will go to entertain, and even educate, but the problem for ‘Bruno’ is that all the shock tactics and audacity will feel somewhat old hat - particularly considering that ‘Bruno’ roughly follows the same template as ‘Borat’. Take an outrageous character/caricature and send them to America for max potential!

It doesn’t help that this time out, a lot of the scenes seem more forced and set-up despite a few stand out sequences that clearly were not (poor Ron Paul). I think what also kept this from being as commercially and critically successful as ‘Borat’ is Bruno being a much less sympathetic creation. 

Not an oblivious country bumpkin who spouts outrageous but ultimately benign idiotisms, Bruno is a couple stereotypes tied into one walking, talking misanthrope, a character fully aware of the ill will he’s spreading.

Whereas Borat was a more cleverly created fool of a character, Bruno comes off as merely a shock jock, one step above ‘Jackass’ on the evolutionary ladder. You will certainly laugh, but it will come at a price. 

The gag this time is that Bruno has been ‘schwartzlisted’ from his native Austria when he embarrasses himself at a fashion show wearing a decidedly not thought-out Velcro suit. This now gives him the opportunity to head to Hollywood to become the star he always knew he could be where he sets up a variety of stunts to get him into the limelight of tinseltown. 

Since Cohen has obviously become better known now, he had to work harder to keep the surprises with a lot of sequences being dangerously close to appearing staged. The Arkansas-set cage sequence looks as real as the Texas talk show segment looks staged. His one-on-one with Paula Abdul is debatable (a similar sequence with Latoya Jackson was cut for the apparent reasons) but his brief run-in with Harrison Ford was hilariously on the money. 

In the brief 82-minute running time, highlights include the funny, awkward but altogether unfair set-up with Ron Paul, a disturbingly real Southern swingers scene where Bruno gets (deserved?) whipped repeatedly and the aforementioned finale where Cohen/Bruno sets himself up as ‘Straight Dave’, a mullet-adorned cage fight host who ends up giving the drunken, redneck audience one heck of a show and is lucky to escape alive (the visual commentary all but confirms this). 

Although why is the American south always singled out? It just seems like easy targets. Clearly if you get a bunch of Southerners drunk and ready for a cage match, throwing two guys in the cage who end up making out and stripping will cause a commotion. Funny? Sure. Would this be news to anybody? No. 

All that being said, if you were a huge fan of ‘Borat’, you will no doubt find a lot to like here as it’s mostly more of the same just wrapped up in a more disgusting bow. 

The pic is presented with a 1.85 1080p AVC encode that’s works as well as it could considering the source. Most segments have a down and dirty documentary feel with an ample amount of grain. All of this is intentional of course but I’m not sure you will see a significant difference between the Blu and the DVD.

There are a few scenes that take advantage of 1080p though so if you’re renting, might as well go with the Blu. The DTS-HD Master Aud mix follows suit with the video but is generally clear and easy to hear which is the most you can hope for with this type of material. 

Special Features start off with the highlight, the ‘Enhanced Video Commentary Track’ which is basically a pop up window with Cohen and director Larry Charles as they discuss the various segments in the film while the film is paused.

The pic runs about thirty extra minutes with the track but it’s highly informative and a fun listen as Charles and Cohen discuss all the various hoops and troubles they went through to pull off some of these segments. 

We get over an hour of ‘Extended’, ‘Alternate’ and ‘Deleted’ scenes with the ‘Alternate’ scenes with Pete Rose set up in the same manner as Paula Abdul being pretty funny and John Bolton, Tom Ridge and Gary Bauer getting the Ron Paul treatment. The cut LaToya Jackson segment also pops up in the ‘Deleted Scenes’.

Some fun stuff here and pretty much interchangeable with what made it to the film. Rounding things out is an ‘Interview with Lloyd Robinson’, BD-Live connectivity and a digital copy. 

Ultimately, the odd segment works as intended – to be both funny and enlightening – but Cohen most often seemed to traverse the easier shock laugh path offering up a dildo here or an anal bleaching there.

‘Borat’ was certainly no stranger to crudeness but the dependence on it was not the full running time. Recommended for longtime Cohen fans but everybody else would be wise to approach with caution. 

Brüno [Blu-ray] is now available at Amazon. Visit the DVD database for more information.