This is topic Bruno (2009) in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Justin Gorka (Member # 3727) on 06-09-2009, 10:07 AM:
 
Had the privilege of seeing a pre-censor version of this.... hilarious! Far better than Borat. Very close to the mark though. I hope they will not go down to a UK15 cert as it will lose some of the more daring (obscene?) elements of the film.
It will be a hit in the UK though regardless.
4/5
 

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Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 06-09-2009, 10:36 PM:
 
It has been classified 'R' over here meaning no-one under 18 years of age can see it...period.

Universal are appealing the classification.

So, it has naughty bits and gets an 'R'...meanwhile SAW movies and their like with grotesque violence continue to be churned out with 'MA' classifications which is like a US 'R'.

Crazy.


 

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Posted by Ross Oba (Member # 3433) on 06-09-2009, 11:02 PM:
 
Interesting. Your 'R' rating is our NC-17 rating. Universal has resubmitted it for reclassification and got it down to an R rating.

As for the UK, it will probably end up with an 18 rating.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 06-09-2009, 11:30 PM:
 
I can't remember the guy's name who makes these movies, but if Borat was any indication, it probably has tons of penis all over it. He'll do anything for shock value.
 

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Posted by Julio Roberto (Member # 4976) on 06-10-2009, 01:46 AM:
 
http://www.mtv.co.uk/artists/eminem/news/122823-watch-bruno-eminem-at-mtv-movie-awards

...in case anyone missed it
[MTV movie awards Sasha/Eminem bit, TV commercial preceeds it]
 

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Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 06-10-2009, 03:38 PM:
 
Can someone please explain to Julio how to do the link title thing?

OK, I will...where it says 'title of the web page' that does not mean the entire URL...it means 'what the link actually is' such as: Bruno sticks his bum in Eminem's face.
 

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Posted by Justin Gorka (Member # 3727) on 06-10-2009, 06:02 PM:
 
Joe, there's more penis than I would have been thought possible for a cinema release...I believe the version I saw is ten minutes longer than even an 18(UK) release. Forgot to say that the editing is really sharp! |(novelty in this day and age)
 

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Posted by Caleb Johnstone-Cowan (Member # 3710) on 06-11-2009, 07:04 PM:
 
I thought a film had to be hardcore porn before the BBFC will not give the film an 18?
 

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Posted by Caleb Johnstone-Cowan (Member # 3710) on 06-16-2009, 09:08 PM:
 
Well it got an '18' here. Bruno will still make big money, just going to be more of a hassle keeping the kids out.
 

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Posted by Justin Gorka (Member # 3727) on 06-17-2009, 03:44 PM:
 
Thank goodness for that! Kids a problem......that's why we have a dropbox and regular screen checks!
 

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Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 06-17-2009, 03:58 PM:
 
What's a dropbox?
 

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Posted by Andy Muirhead (Member # 712) on 06-17-2009, 07:55 PM:
 

quote: Caleb Johnstone-Cowan

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Well it got an '18' here. Bruno will still make big money, just going to be more of a hassle keeping the kids out.

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quote:

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Thank goodness for that! Kids a problem......that's why we have a dropbox and regular screen checks!

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quote: Justin Gorka

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that's why we have a dropbox

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quote: John Wilson

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What's a dropbox?

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quote: Caleb Johnstone-Cowan

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As do we,

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quote: Me

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It has been classified 'R' over here meaning no-one under 18 years of age can see it...period.

Universal are appealing the classification.

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quote: John Wilson

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Just received word it's been re-classified on appeal to an MA rating here which is pretty similar to your 'R' except it's under 15 must be accompanied by an adult.

Still unclear if it's been cut or simply re-classified untouched. Either way...Universal here are no doubt popping the champagne as we speak as they just doubled their take and it hasn't even opened yet.

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John, nothing about this on OFLC website.??
 

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Posted by John Koutsoumis (Member # 1855) on 06-22-2009, 09:10 PM:
 
I just received the new classification bulletin from the OFLC and it is indeed MA15+ for the following:
Strong sex scenes and nudity, crude humour and coarse language
 

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Posted by Michael Hossen (Member # 4274) on 06-23-2009, 03:39 AM:
 
Got a new bulletin yesterday too. Cheers John(s).
 

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Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 06-23-2009, 05:37 AM:
 

quote: Michael Hossen

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John, nothing about this on OFLC website.??

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The OFLC website was hacked a few weeks ago...they shut it down and re-did it and now it's as useless as tits on a bull. I spoke to someone from there who rang me and explained it would take a while to get all the information transferred. That's fair enough, but they've gone and transferred all the old information first yet cannot find anything on many current releases.

It's a government department...of course they'd do things the most nutso way first.
 

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Posted by Michael Hossen (Member # 4274) on 06-23-2009, 11:11 AM:
 

quote:

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The OFLC website was hacked a few weeks ago...they shut it down and re-did it and now it's as useless as tits on a bull. I spoke to someone from there who rang me and explained it would take a while to get all the information transferred. That's fair enough, but they've gone and transferred all the old information first yet cannot find anything on many current releases. [Roll Eyes]

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Ahh, remember seeing that... I totally agree with you, since they got this new site up it's been pretty crap.

Hopefully they'll get it sorted out soon.
 

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Posted by Peter Castle (Member # 1997) on 07-05-2009, 04:18 AM:
 
The bug in the OFLC classification search means that if you try to reduce the date range for a new movie, it won't find it.
Just try a search without changing the date range.

Interestingly, the MA version is one minute longer than the R version.
 

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Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 07-05-2009, 04:54 AM:
 
I love all of these REVIEWS.

This movie sounds like a giant piece of cinematic .
 

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Posted by Sally Ann Burgess (Member # 4746) on 07-07-2009, 02:27 AM:
 
It's an R16 over here. Am watching it in just over 13 hours, right after I watch Jacko's send off. Can't wait.
 

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Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 07-07-2009, 08:55 AM:
 
"Drop Box"

"Doorpost"

"Ticket Hopper"

I have yet to see a movie theatre that does not have one. As with any stadium, movie theatre, playhouse, or any venue that sells tickets to an event - there has to be a redemption point or at least someone verifying that the people coming into the event actually has a ticket.....


 

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Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 07-08-2009, 05:14 PM:
 
When they said "It ain't no 'BORAT'", they weren't kidding.

Bleccchhh!
 

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Posted by Jeremy Jorgenson (Member # 2989) on 07-09-2009, 04:38 AM:
 
Well, I laughed ... and (not sure if it's really a spoiler or not, but)

Spoiler Alert - Click to Toggle

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Slash is in it

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Spoiler Alert - Click to Toggle

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I imagine the External urethral orifice "talking" will anger some patrons.

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quote: Jeremy Jorgenson

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Also, there is an umlaut over the u, so the title is actually: Brüno

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quote: Jeremy Jorgenson

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I'm sure we'll be getting some complaints

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Several of our local advertisers have asked us to pull
their ads off screen during the engagement of this film.
 

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Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 07-10-2009, 09:15 AM:
 
Wow. And you're in San Francisco? That's sayin somethin!
 

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Posted by Robert Minichino (Member # 3495) on 07-10-2009, 10:03 AM:
 
Some gay people and advocacy groups are getting their panties in a bunch about it too, so figuring out why an advertiser wants to pull their ads from this film isn't necessarily straightforward.

Personally, I love the concept, but I haven't seen it yet so I can't judge the execution. I should be fixing that tonight.
 

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Posted by Michael McGovern (Member # 4807) on 07-10-2009, 08:46 PM:
 
I saw this tonight at the National Amusements theater in Southington, CT

Let me preface this by saying holy cow, I've seen some scratched prints in my day, but this was amongst the all time worst I've ever seen. I can't even fathom how a film print that has only run for three or four shows total so far, could look as bad as this one did. From beginning to end there were black and green scratches all over the place, I can't even begin to figure out what kind of monkeys this place has running their booth, and what they could have possibly done to scratch the 35mm print in such a way.

I could see maybe someone misses a roller and you get one black scratch, it's inexcusable, but understandable. This print however had several deep scratches all over it throughout the entire film. It went far past the point where you could blame it on faulty equipment, someone who very obviously had no idea how to thread a projector was running this thing, and did everything you could possibly do wrong, and did it multiple times. Quentin Tarentino needs to track down the projectionist at this place and hire him to do post production on the next Grindhouse film, it was that bad. If I was the projectionist or manager of this place, I would have been embarrassed to even continue running the print, it made the movie almost completely unwatchable.

As for the movie, as has been said, it's no Borat. There are many laugh out loud scenes, but the laughs aren't as hard and don't come as often as they did in the last film. This film also seemed to lack any sort of discernible plot, and seemed more like a series inane scenarios each revolving around a different gag based on the same premise. Cohen clearly seemed to have a much more difficult time shooting the kind of material he was looking for, and it showed, as most of the people he was trying to fool seemed to catch on pretty quick.

It was a decent enough follow up, but Cohen would have been better off trying his shtick in a different locale. I'm sure there are plenty of funny ideas that could come from Borat in Japan or Bruno in Africa. Overall I give it a 7/10
 

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Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 07-11-2009, 12:42 PM:
 
Attendance: 2009/07/10 Friday Night 19:30, Carmike Century Cinema 8, Decatur, AL, Auditorium 8, Digital projection, MONO audio

I haven't seen Borat yet, so I don't have it to compare with.

This movie was one of the strangest I've ever seen. I went into it knowing nothing other than a few previews I'd seen on TV, which seemed funny to me, and the sentence that appeared as a description in the local "Go" magazine supplement in the Huntsville Times, which was "Sacha Baron Cohen is a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashion correspendent who repeatedly shocks people guy shocks people with his flamboyant gayness". The redundancy in that description (two uses of the "flamboyantly gay") applies to the movie, and the "repeatedly" is not an understatement.

I can understand why some gay people would be upset about this movie. Imagine how upset black people would be if someone made a movie with a black character that had all of the stereotypical traits from the common racist statements and black jokes and put them into the character. That's what this movie does with homosexuality, and is little more than a collection of flamboyant gay stereotypes and jokes carried to an extreme.

This movie really has no plot and simply relies on shock value and the character offending nearly everyone he comes in contact with, and failing at everything as a result. In Decatur where I saw this, the audience laughed at some things, but not as loudly as I've heard in many comedies. I could tell that people found the material shocking more than funny and the laughs came often, but they were rather quiet laughs. Maybe in Huntsville it went over better, since I don't imagine the Decatur folks being much into a gay-themed movie, and am surprised that 70 people turned out to see it at that showing, even on Friday night. I'd say around 5 walked out on it at some point.

The movie did not seem very long, but when it was over, I was glad. I wasn't able to predict when the end would come because it seemed to be a collection of sketches more than a movie.

Now back to the homosexuality and the Bruno character... I can see that gay people would not want people to think of that kind of person, or anything close, as what comes to mind when thinking about what a gay person is like. Maybe 1 in 1000 or 10000 gay people are anything nearly that flamboyant and annoying, with nearly every gay joke stereotype thrown in?

This is a movie that should probably have never been made, but will probably make a good bit of money on DVD when a more "unedited" or "unrated" version comes out that people will buy simply out of morbid curiosity.

As for the presentation -- it was great. This is the first presentation I'd seen at this location since their switch to digital. It made a HUGE difference. This theatre used to have the shittiest presentation quality of any theatre in the Huntsville-Decatur area and was one of the old Fairlane-Litchfield locations that Carmike had neglected for many years. Their presentations were dim, unevenly lit, and lifeless and the projection was often problematic. The image last night was the brightest, most colorful I've ever seen at this theatre (or really, any theatre). It was razor sharp and brilliant and fit the screen masking perfectly. The only defect I saw was "smearing" of brightness when a bright object appeared at certain screen positons on a dark background (dirty lens, reflection?) New seats with cup holders had been installed since my last visit, but these did not have backs high enough to rest your head like the old ones did. The auditorium decorations looked the same and the screen was the same with seams visible. The audio was still mono (no surround speakers). Still, the audio was far, far better than what I heard from the optical film soundtracks that used to play in there.
 

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Posted by Louis Belloisy (Member # 3836) on 07-12-2009, 12:01 PM:
 
What a horrible piece of
This should not have been made and of course not shown. We have a very low turnout and its interesting to see the few patrons that leave at the end of the show. the girls are red-faced and the guys are embarrassed.

Many patrons leave during the show and ask for their money back. we do not refund, because, i am sure they knew what they were getting into.

Keep them coming like this, hollywood, you are shooting yourselves in the foot, and dragging us down with you.

Louis
 

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Posted by Justin Gorka (Member # 3727) on 07-15-2009, 02:56 PM:
 
Strange how it was the biggest box office take in the US this weekend.
Maybe some of your patrons are beginning to understand the British sense of irony and humour! This is not an anti gay movie...it is there to represent what most of the world thinks of the US....much like Borat. (I do not include myself amongst those people, please note)
 

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Posted by Chris Hipp (Member # 1788) on 07-18-2009, 03:19 PM:
 
Well the nice thing about being American is that we don't care what other countries think about us.

As for the movie, it is just an hour of gay joke, gay joke, look at the redneck har har. Borat at least seemed to have some depth to it. Bruno had some funny scenes but most of the time I was just sitting there thinking "ok, get on with it already"
 

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Posted by Galen Murphy-Fahlgren (Member # 4535) on 07-18-2009, 04:41 PM:
 
Brüno missed the marks set by Borat, Ali G Indahouse, and even the Brüno segment on Da Ali G Show. If exposing homophobia and bias was the goal of Brüno as exposing racism and misplaced nationalism and general idiocy was the goal of Borat, then Brüno failed miserably. If the goal was to portray humorous characters behaving ridiculously as per Ali G, Brüno failed yet again. If, on the other hand, the goal was to make money with relatively low production values and gratuitous penis "comedy," then Brüno was successful.

Personally, I had higher, perhaps idealistic, hopes. Sacha Baron Cohen has always said something before, but Brüno seemed oddly silent, metaphorically speaking of course. The few moments when Baron Cohen uses his highly successful method of letting other people makes fools of themselves, he is successful. The problem is that he never applied this toolset to exposing homophobia or anything other than stupid fame-seeking moms. The few instances where he comes close, his subjects turn out to be quite reasonable, and the enterprise backfires on him. The end result is that if I didn't already know that homophobia was a major issue, I would have left the theater more than a little confused about the nature of prejudice. This ranks as Baron Cohen's worst work.
 

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Posted by Kyle Anderson (Member # 3504) on 07-20-2009, 02:08 AM:
 
I think you need to be from the bible belt to get what he's really getting at with the gay stereotype thing. We had huge crowds for the evening shows
 

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Posted by Craig Duncanson (Member # 4956) on 07-28-2009, 05:22 PM:
 
It did very well in the UK - we're still pretty much sold out Fri / Sat nights.

Incidentally, dont know about the US, but here in the UK, they are replacing reel 2, cutting a certain scene out to be able to reduce it to a 15.
 

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