Brüno

That umlaut cost me a lot of effort, so you better enjoy this brief review. Brüno is quite possibly the most ridiculous movie I have ever seen (and btw, the word is spelled RIDiculous and not REDiculous, for all you spelling morons out there whose mistakes I constantly read and abhor when surfing the interweb). Back to the movie. The film was epically vulgar. More male nudity than you will see in an average day, even if you spent the day in the shower. But beneath its vulgarity, which I won't call offensive because I classify offensive things as those that are racist or rude or unfairly hateful, it held a pretty substantial amount of humor.

While the first 45 minutes of the movie were less than spectacular, and only middlingly funny, Brüno picked up at the midway point when it reverted to Borat's winning formula of making fun of homophobes, rednecks, and what The Graduate would have dubbed "plastics." Please, don't take your parents. About 10% of the patrons in my theater walked out, a pretty sizable number considering the fact that movie tickets are not free. But if you are unfazed by terrfic amounts of material that would have given a Victorian viewer multiple heart attacks, then you might actually enjoy the satire and even the stupid humor present in the movie. The fact that most of the film was unscripted makes it more enjoyable. Best of all, the fact that a movie containing so much sexuality is garnering so much national attention is a good thing for the movie industry and for the fight against censorship in general. Hopefully, the sheer over-the-topness of Brüno will NOT have the same effect as the 1972 film "Deep Throat," which disgusted the foolish, unwitting crowds that entered theaters expecting anything more than a thinly-veiled porno so much that it set the fight against censorship back several years. Cohen focus on satire over otherwise-gratuitous nudity and sexual content, however, should keep this film from having the same effect.