Bruno

What it’s about:

After being booted from Austrian TV, gay fashionista Brüno (Sacha Baron Cohen) makes his way to America to find fame, fashion and the odd handsome hunk. His bid for celebrity sees him colliding with a diverse cast of real-life celebrities, agents and other unwitting victims.

What we thought:

Stop right there if you are gay, religious, Austrian, or have any kind of aversion to merciless close-ups of dancing genitalia. There is little to no prospect of you enjoying this film. By all means, read the review, but don’t you dare watch the film.

There are many reasons why Bruno’s predecessor, Borat, was a cult hit. Like Borat, Bruno follows the exploits of a foreigner travelling in the United States on a naïve quest (Bruno is a gay Austrian fashion reporter who wants to become famous).  Both lasso a massive contingent of real-life people, famous and anonymous alike, into an elaborate series of horrifying pranks. Like Borat, Bruno plumbs the depths of shock humour but also casts a genuine satirical light on that greatest of countries, the "US" of "A".

But while Borat left viewers with an impression that they had looked straight through the Stars & Stripes and seen something genuinely ugly, Bruno revels in being an exploitative shockumentary, and little else besides.

You will laugh, though. That’s just what people do in the face of excruciating discomfort. I laughed when US politician Ron Paul was made the unwitting participant of a sex tape. I laughed when Bruno tells a live-in-the-flesh terrorist that "your king Osama looks like a sort of dirty wizard." It’s all so horrifying, so real and so weird at the same time, you either have to walk out the cinema, close your eyes or laugh until you cry.

Predictably, inevitably, the film’s politics are already being called into question. Gay rights advocates are wary that Bruno will entrench harsh stereotypes of homosexual men (presumably like Rambo entrenches the stereotype that Americans like to kill Vietnamese… whoops). Austrians and Jewish people will argue that Hitler jokes just aren’t funny anymore. Many, many others have a huge problem with the film’s foul language and toilet humour.

But that’s the point of a Sacha Baron Cohen film, isn’t it? Some people will be made to look ridiculous. Others are meant to be deeply offended. Finally, a tiny contingent of the audience, those of us who delight in the discomfort of others, are meant to have a ball of a time. And they will. Leave the kids and your manners at home. You’ve been warned.