Robert VerBruggen complains
about Borat's anti-rural bent. But if you want to see Sacha Baron
Cohen skewer urbanites, turn not to Borat but to Bruno, Baron
Cohen's gay Austrian fashionista character. Deployed to the chic
corners of New York and
Los
Angeles*, or in the studio* with
ethics-free entertainment "journalists," Bruno gets the ultra-hip
to nod along as he not-so-subtly advocates genocide for the
unfashionable, praises the fashion sense of Hitler and bin Laden,
equates a poorly-dressed Oscar nominee to a "mini-9/11," laughs at
the poor, and more.
I must say, though, I don't see how a Bruno movie (which is
reportedly in the planning stages) will work. The hipsters should
be mostly on to Baron Cohen by now, and the other half of Bruno's
schtick, where he expose people you'd expect to be uncomfortable
with flamboyant homosexuality to indeed be uncomfortable, is much
less successful.
By the way, our own Bob Barr appears briefly in Borat;
he comes off as well as one of Baron Cohen's marks can.