Lower humor, with a higher-pitched voice

In Borat Sasha Baran Cohen offended many and delighted many with his impersonation of a clueless, misogynistic, anti-Semitic Kazakh reporter roaming the USA. The film was a big hit in the States and received astonishingly high marks from reviewers considering the reliance on tasteless humor and easy targets -- polite, or simply naive real life southerners and rednecks too unsophisticated to know they were being made fun of for Larry Charles' "guerilla filmmaker" camera. This is not to mention the poor Kazakhs, who were depicted as inbred and moronic. Charles' interim project was Religulous, focusing on Bill Maher's smug, simple-minded mockery of major religions, which underlined the director's weakness for easy ridicule. Charles is neither a documentarian nor a feature filmmaker, but a camera-for-hire with a penchant for provocation and a willingness to work in potentially dangerous circumstances, such as an outraged crowd. He is a good partner for Baran Cohen, who is nothing if not a risk-taker as well as a trickster and provocateur. However as is even more clear in this second film featuring Baran Cohen's antics, it's often not so clear the "real people" aren't in on the joke. Anyway, how authentic -- or important -- is the shock of a Jerry Springer-like audience?

Baran Cohen's operating procedure is to execute a series of stunts in which the character he is mimicking outrages a particular group, and Larry Charles films it and stitches the sequences together into a feature-length movie. The outlineof Borat is repeated in Brüno, winding up in the deep South among people who wouldn't know who the shock comedian was if he were introduced by name.

No doubt about it, Baran Cohen stages his impersonations with unquestionable panache, courage, and consistency. He stays in character even in promotions of the films. His flamboyant, fame-hungry gay Austrian fashionista Brüno is an even more complete creation, physically speaking, than the gawky, unsophisticated Borat. Brüno is sleek and styled, his hair bleached and frosted, even, as shown in one of the scenes of milder offense, down to the hairs around his anus. Slimmed down and shaved, he wears outrageous pseudo-chic "gay" outfits, usually showing a lot of arm and leg, fur, leather, velcro, mesh, and the like. He tosses off his pseudo-German dialogue most cleverly. He prances and swishes. He never loses the glazed, smug look in his eyes even when in danger of bodily assault.

But it's hard to see the results as a feature film, because there is little story. Brüno's adventures supposedly result from his quest for fame, in which he is far from being the first to confuse celebrity with notoriety; but the quest has no trajectory. The Brüno shtick itself works in short segments but runs dry well before the 88 minutes are up. Shock that is expected is no longer shock. The lack of a real plot line, not to mention a point, is more obvious now that the game plan is so familiar. There is no depth here. And the mainstream critics have grasped this: Brüno may be doing well at the box office, but the rave reviews Borat reaped are not forthcoming this time.

Is Brüno offensive to gay people? Absolutely; but Brüno's fans assert in defense that homophobes aren't likely to see this film. They don't really know this. But anyway it's not a good argument. Well meaning straight people often condone homophobic humor because they don't feel its bite. So do gay people, because they're trying to be with it, or because they're self-hating. Pop psychologists have already been consulted and opined that only gays who are fearful and unsure of themselves or overly solemn will balk at this movie. A healthy queer will laugh along with Brüno and be the healthier for it. But that's just the argument of those who honestly believe Baran Cohen's shtick is still the latest hip thing. It's not. It's just more offensive than the old, now unhip, hip things of yesterday. It's the mainstream-acceptable pseudo-avant-garde of offensiveness. It's still homophobic. As Anthony Lane rightly points out in his New Yorker review, "Brüno feels hopelessly complicit in the prejudices that it presumes to deride. You can’t honestly defend your principled lampooning of homophobia when nine out of every ten images that you project onscreen comply with the most threadbare cartoons of gay behavior." These include the idea that gay people have sex but not love, that they are mincing and shallow, never dignified or deep, and that their sex involves grotesque anal penetration devices. Let's put it another way. To make fun of gay people, you need to be gay. Otherwise you're being homophobic. Isn't that obvious? Fill in "Jews" or "blacks" and see. The argument that to offend everybody is to offend nobody is not convincing. To offend everybody is to offend everybody. But Brüno doesn't offend everybody. If offends homophobes and black people, but it also can offend gay people who have a sense of pride -- Gay Pride.

The final deflation of the shtick is how many of the victims of Baran Cohen's tricks come off with dignity. Over and over, even when he's invaded a southern swingers' party and is whipped by a busty female for being skittish about indulging in straight sex, he appears like an awkward interloper. The Palestinian and Israeli spokesmen, the celebrity psychic, the southern ministers specializing in converting homos into heteros, all come through as patient and polite with an annoying fool rather than dupes. Ron Paul comes off looking stupid, but it's an ever dumber trick to pretend to be interviewing him and then pretend to be trying to seduce him. He just reads the newspaper, and then walks abruptly out. So this is hilarious?

No, the only accomplishment is Sasha Baran Cohen's impersonation, the costumes, the swagger, the Austrian accent, the garbled but adept German talk. He's a remarkable trickster and outrageous impersonator, a kind of living art piece, here. But it's not enough for a feature film, and the scenes are rarely funny. (I admit that the adopted "accessory" black baby flaunted before the Jerry Springer-style show with the "traditional African name" of "OJ", in it's typically outrageous way, was funny. And some of the verbal humor. Using "Auschwitz" for "arse" is a bold joke.) Unfortunately Baran Cohen and Charles' addiction to danger, never greater than when before an Arkansas fight club staging a gay kiss, trumps the opportunities, like that talk show, for Brüno to show off verbal humor, which is what the Brits are good at. (Let's not forget Sasha is a Brit.) Satirical wit is what some of us like -- not crotch and anus jokes or slapstick. Stay home, and if you want a swishy fashionista see Ben Stiller in Zoolander.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.