1/5 The Worst Ever!
  by PLE
This is by far the worst movie I've ever seen in my life. No lie. What a waste of $3.99 for the rental. Save your money. ZERO stars!

1/5 Clearly shows where America is going.
  by Derik G. Wilson (Kansas City, MO)
If you were wondering what direction America is going, then take a look at this movie. This is the reason liberals should move to Canada.

3/5 A Lesson in Socratic Irony II
  by Sky (New York)
The public reaction to Bruno seemed a lot more low key than the reaction--perhaps 'outcry' is a better word--that people had to Sasha Baron Cohen's Borat. I'm sure that's because "the word was out" that this movie was by the same guy that did Borat and expectations were set for some pretty crude stuff. And, indeed, crude stuff is what Bruno delivers. It's offensive. It's hilarious. It'll make you squirm and say "oh my God" dozens of times throughout. It'll have you wondering why you're laughing, but you will laugh.

The suggestion that Bruno is the funniest movie or character to come along in years is way overrated. The Bruno character is funny. But what is funnier is watching the reaction to the character by the people that he is duping. If what you're really after are public reactions to pranks and gags, you can certainly get it all for free on YouTube. Cohen just has a better knack for executing his gags on VIPs.

It still amazes me how such a very small amount of the US population either doesn't have HBO or simply had never tuned into HBO's Da Ali G Show. Sasha Baron Cohen didn't break new ground with the Bruno character. The characters were a regular part of Da Ali G Show introduced to US viewers via HBO in 2004. Cohen's Ali G character (a stereotypical hip-hop, British ghetto banger TV host), Bruno (the gay Austrian fashion TV host) and the Borat character (the Kazakhstani documentarist) all have the same modus operandi....

....And that modus operandi is Socratic Irony. The characters deliberately feign ignorance in order to expose weakness in another's position. The result most of the time is hilarity. As I said, whether it's Bruno, Ali G or Borat, the laughs are less to each character's behavior and more to the reaction of the person being duped. Cohen goes way over the top (over the line?) by exploiting the commitment that people have to being politically correct; Cohen is often hard pressed to find anyone to just step up and challenge the ridiculous actions, opinions and questions that Cohen's characters come up with. Cohen's characters' naive stupidity make his victims look equally stupid...Socratic Irony. (The only victim that I ever saw that had enough intelligence to walk out of the situation before it got started without any regard to whether or not he was offending the Cohen character was Donald Trump in when he was being interviewed by the Ali G character.)

So don't be fooled into being offended by any of the Cohen characters. They are not real; the man behind the mask really isn't that stupid. He's trying to make YOU look stupid. And if you take Cohen's characters seriously, you will indeed look stupid. You see? Socratic Irony.


2/5 Bruno... Not a gay old time.
  by Julian Kennedy (St Pete Florida)
Bruno: 4 out of 10: I have to admit I am more than a bit disappointed here. Bruno has its share of laugh out loud moments but it simply does not have those great memorable scenes that made Borat such a treat.

One cannot help comparing Bruno to Borat since in many ways they are the same story. Borat worked because the character was, at least on a movie logic level, believable. He was played as an innocent whom one could root for; even if he had some terrible values upon reflection. He was a lovable character.

While Borat has an innocent air about him and a charismatic travelling companion, Bruno is as characterized a horrible human being from the get go with a milquetoast traveling companion.

Bruno is a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashion host that is so horrible, one simply feels nothing but sympathy for Sacha Baron Cohens victims. When you start feeling sorry for Ron Paul and Anti-homosexual Christian deprogrammers the movie has clearly gone of the rails.

Cohen tries to infuse Bruno with countless shots of male gentalia to embarrass (one supposes) his audience, Alas none if it is as cringe inducing as the naked wresting from the first movie (Come to think of it, nothing on earth is as cringe inducing as that scene) and nothing in Bruno comes anywhere close to being that funny.

While there are certainly scattered laughs throughout the film, Bruno is more in the style of an old Mondo Cane movie than a comedy. It is more about making the audience and his victims uncomfortable than provoking any mirth or insight.

When I watched Borat, I would tell myself if I met the character on the street I would be polite to him as well. While watching Bruno I was shocked no one punched him in the face.

4/5 Multiple Jaw Drops...
  by kerouac's ghost (the void)
For the average person, the primary reaction is, "Is this guy nuts?" It's a combination of admiration for the selflessly brave while assuming there is something fundamentally wrong with Sacha Baron Cohen.

Moral considerations? Not subject matter. As outrageous as all this is, BRUNO does not delve into subjects that have not been explored before. The moral consideration is for some (not all, not even most) of his victims. Doesn't a person have the right to sit at a fashion show and not be confronted/attacked just so someone else can make a movie and more money? Cohen and Larry Charles don't think so. At the end of the day, they think their project is more important than other people's right to be left alone. So if Cohen and Charles think they have the moral high ground (and they do think that), they are wrong.

The movie? Absolutely side splittingly, outrageously hysterically funny. To see Cohen and cohort chained together in some kind of bizarre fetishistic-over-the-top-psychotic-sex-play....outfit, while begging hotel staffers to help them find the key (with white paper taped to the hotel room wall with some, uh, "interesting" stains) is to see "Punked" and "Candid Camera" on acid. To watch completely insane yokels in Arkansas absolutely lose their minds with hatred and anger as Cohen and cohort grope gayly in a cage at a would-be "hetero pride" fight match is possibly the most hilarious thing you will ever see in a movie. I could go on and on...

Cohen and Charles are at their best showing up the unapologetically bigoted and the mind blowingly shallow; targets that invite ridicule and these guys are experts in heaping ridicule on the unsuspecting.

The commentary feature is very interesting as Cohen and Charles reveal the stories behind actually executing the scenes in the movie. They are a brave lot (of course, the stupendously wealthy can afford to be). They are, however, quite often full of themselves and, occassionally, you would think they had made "Schlindler's List". They are brilliant in many ways and, like such people, can be long on pretension. That gets old in a hurry because, as mentioned earlier, they have made a hilarious movie but occupy no moral high ground.