Sacha Baron Cohen: 'Bruno' vs. 'Borat'

Sacha Baron Cohen's latest, Bruno, said Edward Douglas in Comingsoon.net, is "a much funnier film" than his last one, Borat. This time around, the comedian plays a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashionista on a quest for fame, and Cohen's "exaggerated caricature" finds "clever and inventive ways" to expose the rampant "homophobia in play in our country." Bruno "had me laughing loudly and almost in tears many times at some of the most insane things I've seen onscreen." (watch the trailer for Bruno)

Bruno is "daring and sometimes insightful," said Bill Goodykoontz in The Arizona Republic, and it's also "often hilarious." But it's "not quite up to the lofty standards of Borat." (watch the trailer for Borat) Cohen's Borat character "was the classic stranger in a strange land, allowing him ample opportunity to poke holes in all manner of American culture," while Bruno spends most of the film "flaunting" his sexuality, and "it's too one-note to sustain."

"Borat was such a hit that it's a struggle to find people gullible enough to not recognize" Sacha Baron Cohen now, said Roger Moore in the Orlando Sentinel, so "few people worth mocking are fooled by the disguise any more"—and "the strain shows." And most of the time, "Bruno feels like Borat's weak-wristed brother, too much of it just a gay cliché aimed straight at the American bigot belt."

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