As someone who flipped out over Borat, I couldn't wait to see Bruno. (Especially after laughing my ass off at the trailer.) So my hetero-life-partner and I headed straight to the theater the day it opened, last Friday.We went to a theater on Second Avenue which was showing it every 20 minutes. Sold out. We went to another on 19th Street. Sold out. We finally decided to try a theater on 23rd Street and 8th Avenue.
Success!
It was only after we had purchased our tickets that we realized that we were about to see Bruno in possibly the gayest (and by "gayest" I mean "homosexual-friendly") neighborhood in North America -- Chelsea.
Indeed, as we waited on line for the movie to start we realized something odd:
There were no women. Anywhere. When we got into the theater (not quite sold out) there were a sprinkling of women, but for the most part it was a room full of gay men -- and Noah and myself.
Which, I must admit, was an interesting way to see Bruno -- especially since the question "Is it good for the gays?" was so talked about.
One extremely close relative (who's gay) was pretty certain Bruno would be bad for the gays. (He also thought Borat was bad for the Jews.) His partner seemed pretty ambivalent.
But, seeing it in Chelsea, it seems like the vast majority of the audience lapped it up.
Admittedly, as did I.
Bruno is extremely vulgar. It is in many ways a retrod of Borat. Not all the jokes worked. I squirmed plenty of times. But I thought it was frankly a lot riskier than Borat (both in terms of the humor, and the amount of danger Sacha Baron Cohen exposed himself to.) The funny things in it were really, really funny.
Verdict: Good for the gays.
