Brüno

For the third time, Sacha Baron Cohen took one of his characters to the big screen (he’ll have to actually come up with some new ones from now on), and for the third time they just didn’t work as well over a feature film. Brüno is a great character for a sketch show, exposing the hypocrisy of the fashion world and the prejudices of insecure and ignorant people confronted by homosexuality. In a full film, though, you don’t just have one strong gag, but a narrative and a character at the centre of it. Borat was a hit because for all his prejudices, grotesque habits and stupidity, he was likeable and sympathetic. You can even get on Ali G’s side. But Brüno is so self-centred, ignorant, vain and sociopathic, and the act so much more transparent, that you never grow to like him or care what happens next. So while there are outrageous moments, big laughs and some setpieces where you realise that Sasha Baron Cohen is genuinely putting himself in real danger, the film actually gets quite dull – and most of the biggest laughs were given away in the trailer anyway.

And the humour is getting tired now. In Borat, there was a degree of shock that people could actually think that someone from Eastern Europe would act the way the title character does, and surprise at the degree of prejudice confronting a person that the people he meets believes is genuinely that way. You don’t get that with Brüno. There are people who act like him (there were two on the train yesterday on the way to the Michael Jackson vigil in the 02, German guys playing into exactly the same limp-wristed clichés) but there’s always an impression of artificiality there anyway. The genius of Borat was that naked wrestling aside, what he did wasn’t all that outrageous. He transgressed social norms just a little, just enough to outrage but not enough for the illusion to break. But the revelation that covering a baby with bees, going to a straight guy’s tent naked and making advances, rolling around almost naked with another guy when people expect wrestling, trivialising the conflicts in the Middle East and the rest of it will insult? Well, big deal. Slowly getting fashion designers to flatly contradict themselves is pretty clever. Making Bible Belt Americans angry by showing them homosexual activity? Doesn’t take any cleverness at all.