Did I laugh at “Brüno”? Yes Did I laugh as much as I did at “Borat”? No.
Personally, I think Sacha Baron Cohen is a skilled, clever actor whose absorption into a character is fascinating to watch. I feel about him the way critics in my youth raved about the late Peter Sellers. I liked watching Sellers but I often found the actor a bit mechanical and I couldn’t connect to a humanity in some of his performances. Cohen lets a humanity break through, almost as if against its will. For those of us who watched him on HBO when he was playing “Ali G.,” we’d seen a bit of Brüno in some episodes. When the movie featuring the gay fashionista was announced, I felt a slight chill that that artist would have to contend with corporate tampering to a degree.
I was right. I noticed that “Brüno” would be a Universal release. That studio has merged with NBC. That would mean Cohen’s script could be subject to change, change that would insert NBC “product placement.” To me, one of the funniest scenes in the movie shows Bruno as the worst background actor ever to be used in a courtroom scene for a “Law & Order” episode. Cohen’s acting was fabulous in that section. However, I sensed the sequence was ordered by corporate — “We need to include something promoting one of our NBC shows.” The actors surrounding Cohen in that sequence seemed to be in on the gag which smudges the “reality” of Cohen’s surreal work. Also NBC calculatedly kicked open the expensive doors and made that kind of flamboyant gay male a stock character nowadays. Think Jack on “Will & Grace,” think of Carson Kressley’s stand-out naughty but nice gayness on “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” think of Steven Cojocaru when he was a contributor on “Today” and Ross the Intern on the “Tonight” show. All those are NBC programs.
When Cohen as Brüno had a too-long interview with Matt Lauer on “Today,” Cohen was having problems. You could see him working, struggling a bit. For some reason, TV news executives will constantly book edgy comic performers to be guests on a live news program and then get nervous when the comics do the quality of work that got them booked on the show in the first place. Brüno sat across from Lauer (playing straight man) and referred to his “fellow gay Austrian, Arnold Schwarzenegger,” just as he did onscreen. That got a big laugh in the movie theater when I saw it. I heard nervous laughter on the “Today” set. Schwarzenegger is married to NBC’s Maria Shriver. Years ago, he canceled a press conference and chose, instead, to announce his political ambitions on the “Tonight” show with Jay Leno. Cohen as Brüno, in a live network appearance, proved that the erasure of the line between news and entertainment was a sad thing indeed. Actor and Newsman were both trapped in their on-camera personas, trying to be true to their personas while also promoting a corporate product for mass entertainment.
Barbara Walters blasted the film. She hated the prolonged full-frontal male nudity. I thought the scene was exactly what the annoying Brüno would have done. It was perfect for the character. I also think that Cohen is a heterosexual man who likes the male organ the way a lot of guys like looking at new cars. If he was in the gym locker room, he’d be the kind of guy who’d say to a buddy, “Wow, mate, you’ve got a lovely penis. No wonder your wife is always so happy. Cheers.” About his improvisational absorption into a comic character being as deep yet warmer than the work of Peter Sellers, there’s one scene in “Brüno” that highlights it: The selfish, vapid and ruthless gay fame seeker has a long-suffering, shy German assistant. The assistant is in love with his boss. In one scene, the assistant gathers his courage and makes his affections known to Brüno. Cohen brilliantly shows a crack in Brüno’s gay celebrity mask revealing the pathetic middle-aged man who is offered something that he knows his more substantial than the spotlight he chases. It’s like suddenly seeing a number on a paint-by-the-numbers painting and Bruno hurriedly hides it with a random dark color. Ms. Walters missed that acting excellence because she could not get past the penis.
