Bruno (2009) Critic Reviews

In spite of Mr. Baron Cohen and Mr. Charles’s high-level skills and keen low-comic instincts, Brüno is a lazy piece of work that panders more than it provokes.Read the full review

Seems fatally out of tune, with every staged encounter falling as flat as the protagonist's hot-ironed bob.Read the full review

Like a wayward love child of Lenny Bruce and the Three Stooges, Brüno is an idiot savant of penetration -- breaking through borders, boundaries and anything that resembles good taste on his way to whipping up as much cultural anarchy as he can. I would guess Brüno is holding on to an R rating for this sublimely spicy soufflé by the skin of his, well, let's just not say.Read the full review

Brüno offers more shock value for your moviegoing dollar than any other movie this year.Read the full review

The humor of Brüno is arguably crueler and more misanthropic than "Borat's."Read the full review

It's hard to deny that Brüno succeeds in being both outrageous and outrageously funny, and it's hard to damn a comedy, regardless of its faults, for those qualities.Read the full review

Here’s the bad news: Brüno is no "Borat." Here’s the worse news: Brüno crosses the line, like a besotted sprinter, from hilariously to genuinely awful.Read the full review

Bruno is only intermittently funny and all too often the "ambushes" of celebrities and civilians look staged. The movie is even a tad -- dare we say it? -- tedious.Read the full review

The bad outweighs the good and the cringes outnumber the laughs in Brüno, a disappointment from Sacha Baron Cohen, whose "Borat" was one of the funniest movies of the decade.Read the full review