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Bruno special screening
Sacha Baron Cohen addressed an Austin audience at the Alamo Sunday night via videotape to introduce the first-ever selected clips from his new movie. Security was tight, the footage was rough and the crowd was howling. The movie opens July 10.
Here’s what we saw:
Bruno is a gay Austrian cable TV reporter on fashion, and he’s a bit out there. And when he gets fired from his job, he decides to head to Hollywood to become the “biggest Austrian celebrity since Hitler.”
As a fashion accessory, he adopts a baby from Africa, in hopes of getting that Madonna cachet. He also wants to use the baby to stage a crucifixion scene, but he has only one baby to put on the cross, so he begins to interview “stage parents” to see if their babies might be suitable to portray the two thieves on either side of his baby.
The interviews with eager parents are beyond belief. He asks them whether their babies are comfortable with dead or dying animals, and they all say yes. He also wants to know whether their babies are accepting of such things as Komodo dragons, and they all say their babies are fine with such things. One of the babies weighs 30 pounds and Bruno thinks she may be a bit chunky, so he suggests liposuction, and the parent seems to think that’s doable.
Before long, Bruno has dressed up his baby in a “gayby T-shirt” and taken him to a TV talk show in Texas, which is filled with African Americans. Let’s just say they don’t look kindly upon the adoption, and things turn ugly.
When the baby thing doesn’t turn out as Bruno had hoped, he morphs into another person, Straight Dave, the host of a TV wrestling show called Man-Slamming Maxout.
But it seems as though Straight Dave still has a few latent urges lingering below. Let’s just say that the Straight Dave fans are in for a disappointment.
It’s not clear whether Cohen has really continued to find clueless audiences who will fall for his antics. But it appears that he has. The movie is bound to stir up just as much controversy as Borat. And that’s the point.
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By Sam Harp
April 23, 2009 5:47 PM | Link to this
Charles, great review, I look forward to seeing this one!
Sam Harp