BRÜNO’S TRAVELS

John L. Lloyd ‘Sully’ Sullivan: I want this picture to be a commentary on modern conditions. Stark realism. The problems that confront the average man!

Mr. Lebrand: But with a little sex.

John L. Lloyd ‘Sully’ Sullivan : A little, but I don't want to stress it. I want this picture to be a document. I want to hold a mirror up to life. I want this to be a picture of dignity! A true canvas of the suffering of humanity!

Mr. Lebrand: But with a little sex.

John L. Lloyd ‘Sully’ Sullivan: With a little sex in it.

Joel McCrea and Robert Warwick, SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS

On their celluloid surfaces, Larry Charles’ BRüNO (2009) and Preston Sturges’ SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS (1941) seem like drastically different entertainments, but in fact, with over 60 years of cinematic age between them, the films couldn’t be more similar. SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS is truly one of the great films generated from Hollywood (a bygone, classical Hollywood that was the mecca of diversionary amusement where the major studios crafted films strategically, efficiently and creatively) by master helmsman, Preston Sturges; social satire and intelligent farce par excellence and as American as the Walt Disney comedy reel and plate of ham and eggs that are served up. BRüNO is a flashy, outrageous and wickedly humorous cosmopolitan spectacle where the line between fact and fiction (and dignity and obscenity) is blurred; a free-form mockumentary whose purpose is not so much to satirize, but to shock, degrade and catch the film’s subjects (and the audience) off guard. And whereas Joel McCrea’s Sullivan is a wealthy American film director searching for the essence of poverty that possesses and troubles the common man as he prepares for his new project, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, on the other end of the spectrum, Sacha Baron Cohen’s Brüno, is a freshly unemployed and near-broke, flamboyantly gay, Austrian fashionista in the pursuit of celebrity and fame who will achieve it at any cost - - dignity notwithstanding. At the core of these two disparate Odysseys is a man searching for the fiber (or 'fabric') of his humanity while unwittingly putting America under a microscope - - while also having “a little sex in it”.

Whether Brüno’s prey and the sequences in which they’re exhibited are staged or not, Cohen’s incomparable wit and knack for improvisational comedy shines as he skewers a Republican Congressman (while attempting to make a sex-tape which he thinks will earn him renown); a TV show host (when he discovers that philanthropy may lead to fame); a wanted terrorist (believing that being kidnapped will bring undoubted notoriety) and several Middle Eastern diplomats (because instant success must be achieved after bringing together parties that have been feuding for decades) with the arsenal of his microphone and camera. Although these scenes (filmed non-linearly, often several months apart) may seem like an unusual mash-up of interviews on the part of a seemingly submissive host that is Brüno, when merged together, they appear as if they are cleverly compartmentalized trips to different points in the globe that satisfies Brüno’s wanderlust.

And what a globe it is - - a further enhancement to the film is the occasional cutaway to a map of the world composed of fashionable fabrics and textiles (e.g. a denim North America) and jewel-like ornaments that track Brüno’s trek from Austria (where he’s ousted after a blunder involving an all-Velcro outfit on a runway) to Los Angeles to the Middle East to Africa (where he adopts his “African American” son “from Africa”, O.J., whom he "swapped" for a limited-edition iPod). This is literally Brüno’s universe that he encircles, further punctuated by his command over each interview in each new locale that he visits. The only instances when he’s truly submissive are when he attempts to engage in same-sex coupling. Not only does this likely take an offensive turn (for the filmed subject and/or the audience spectator), it also destroys the line of truly objective non-fiction, documentary filmmaking (much like in Belvaux, Bonzel and Poelvoorde’s stunner, MAN BITES DOG, about filmmakers who document a serial killer’s daily grind and soon join in on his crimes).

Brüno is a stinging hybrid of narrative mockumentary and slapstick comedy and as irrepressible and stereotypical Cohen’s personification of Brüno as a homosexual male may be, it is often his subjects ensnared in his (often hidden) cameras who make us laugh or bite the insides of our cheeks to keep from laughing (e.g. when a stage mother agrees to have her toddler engage in liposuction for a part in Brüno’s photo shoot and to also have her child dressed in Nazi fatigues while pushing a wheelbarrow containing a Jewish baby into an oven).

Whereas the sex in SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS is tame (i.e. practically non-existent) except for its often-times provocative innuendo; for instance, two sisters (the Kornheisers) who take Sully into their home offer this exchange:

Miz Zeffie: He seems very strong. Did you notice his torso?

Ursula: I noticed that you noticed it.

Miz Zeffie: Don't be vindictive, dear. Some people are just naturally more sensitive to some things in life than some people. Some are blind to beauty, while others... Even as a little girl you were more the acid type, dear, while I, if you remember...

Ursula: I remember better than you do.

Miz Zeffie: Well forget it. And furthermore I have never done anything that I was ashamed of, Ursula.

Ursula: Neither have I.

Miz Zeffie: Yes, dear, but nobody ever asked you to.

the sex in BRüNO is (literally) ‘balls out’ and graphically ‘in your face’. Brüno is anything but restrained. Similar to the garish outfits he wears - - clothes really do make the man, apparently - - Brüno’s high-pitched dialogue, excessively over-the-top Austrian accent and intermittent body gyrations always make him the focal point. Quite possibly the film’s strongest and most subversive image is the tip of a man’s penis ‘mouthing’ “Brüno”. Cohen is shameless in his portrayal of Brüno and morality on the part of the audience is checked at the door. Aside from body movements in a theatrical setting, if cinema-going is preferably a thinking man’s sport, then by submitting to the images on screen and the sounds emitted from the speaker system, one is engaging in a type of visual and aural interactivity. To remove oneself from the seat and leave the theatre would prove one’s dominance over the imagery being displayed before them - - but why miss out on the fun. If Brüno is stereotyping the modern-day homosexual, there was even a small racial undercurrent in SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS when during the (classic!) uproariously funny RV chase, not only is a white policeman covered in mud giving him a skillfully composed ‘blackface’, but an African American chef’s face is almost simultaneously dowsed in white pancake batter.

While there is no Veronica Lake to speak of in BRüNO, there is the blond escort Lutz, Brüno’s “Assistant’s Assistant” who accompanies him on his journey to celebrity. And although he’s not as forthcoming in his sexual acts (and use of props) as Brüno’s pygmy ex-lover, Diesel, he nevertheless worships the ground that Brüno struts on. Brüno doesn’t realize that it will actually be Lutz who is responsible for his newfound celebrity and ultimate happiness when he arouses Brüno during a type of white trash, televised gay bashing that reeks of Wrestle-mania. As Brüno succumbs to Lutz’s advances and both proceed to strip and open-mouth kiss in front of a pack of offended (straight) spectators, the cameras are rolling (as usual) and Brüno’s fame is secured.

Thankfully, both SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS and BRüNO end on a light night ~ with the films' respective characters laughing joyously with no sign of conflict and in good cheer. Are Charles and Sturges onto something here: that comedy will cure the world’s ills? Cohen’s naiveté, his character’s scandalous behavior and Brüno’s struggle to succeed only enhances the film’s light-heartedness. If it were a serious performance sans the ‘Gay minstrel’ and not one laugh could be procured by the filmmaker(s), G-d help us all, as that would be no laughing matter.

THE LOST EVENING

“Don't wipe it away, Nat. Let me have my little vicious circle. You know, the circle is the perfect geometric figure. No end, no beginning.”

Don Birnam, THE LOST WEEKEND

“For tomorrow may bring sorrow, so tonight let us be gay.”

William Powell, MY MAN GODFREY and THE THIN MAN

Some guys just don’t know when to quit - - and “some guys just can’t handle Vegas”, a valet outside of Caesars Palace comments with tag-line ingenuity in Todd Phillips’ THE HANGOVER. It is ironic, and perhaps, interesting to note that the movie takes place in and around a hotel thematically displaying the Roman Empire, so, could it be that a movie chock-full of so much preposterousness and base behavior might very well signal the imminent collapse of a Hollywood Empire?

Not so much a whodunit as it is a ‘whatdunit’, the movie follows three groomsmen: Phil (the ‘experienced’ and married alpha male of the group as well as a scornful schoolteacher who exhibits dangerous and obscene characteristics not befitting a father figure); Stu (a dentist proud of his doctoral degree whose self-esteem has been literally shattered by his domineering girlfriend, Melissa) and Alan (a man-child with a penchant for lewdness, a demeanor of awkward immaturity and a legal order to stay a reasonable distance from elementary schools and Chuck E. Cheese restaurants hanging over his heavily-bearded head) as they take their respective friend and Alan’s brother-in-law-to-be, Doug, to Sin City to celebrate his last night as a bachelor before he’s married in Los Angeles.

As they toast their (unbeknownst to them) Rufalin-spiked cocktails on the roof of Caesars with promises of “a night {we'll} they’ll never forget”, it quickly becomes an evening that any sensible moviegoer watching cannot suspend his or her disbelief and quite frankly, makes for a difficult entertainment to discuss around the water cooler. For instance, how far can a legitimate conversation go after mentioning “remember when they put five roofies in that raw steak and fed it to the tiger?” Meanwhile, my fondness for Howard Hawks’ BRINGING UP BABY grows as the leopard, Baby, was treated with much more humanity and the film itself contained many more belly laughs.

In contrast with the marvelous screwball farce of MY MAN GODFREY (a film out of HANGOVER’s league entirely) William Powell’s Godfrey succumbs to drunkenness only to have one of the major characters attempt to take advantage of the situation and frame him for a crime he doesn’t commit while in his drunken stupor. In a clever sequence of events, Godfrey outwits his adversary with an accent on elegance without muscle, profanity or (self-) humiliation while Phillips’ characters resort to and take these for granted. How times and the cinema has changed. Degradation has not only become the norm, it is the new punch line. Slipping on a banana peel is to Mack Sennett, as Zach Galafianakis being fellated by a sexagenarian in an elevator is to Todd Phillips. It is my hope that this review will have more redeeming value than the movie in which it is critiquing.

While GODFREY consists of two spoiled, drunk society girls who, on their way home from an evening of heavy drinking, break a series of windows along Fifth Avenue and walk a horse “up the front steps” of their palatial abode leaving it in their library, their actions not only have the makings of delightful screwball farce, but the girls are found guilty of their crimes and their father pays a penalty. On the other hand, the leads in THE HANGOVER get away with everything they engage in - - even if it’s on the verge of murder.

THE HANGOVER’s producers, including Chris Bender (no pun intended), have thrown (up) together sequences for a movie so deliriously implausible that any reasonable viewer may be too busy trying to make sense of the dramatic landscape while the filmmakers may have hoped to enshroud the impossible goings-on with low brow schtick. A clever plot device once employed by Hitchcock (the MacGuffin) to propel his films forward to an exciting and intelligent climax, here, is nothing more than several elements of sheer buffoonery that warrants a roll of the eyes or to be respectful of the activities of the movie’s characters, a palm slapping one’s forehead.

These inconceivable antics include, but are not limited to the following:

• Ascending a stairwell in a seemingly high-security, ultra plush hotel environment with roof-access where our four hapless heroes engage in the start of their drinking binge. One thing that Las Vegas doesn’t have on short supply is surveillance cameras and if it wasn’t a security guard, a maintenance technician would’ve surely impeded their stroll to the summit of Caesars Palace.
• After an evening of alcohol abuse by all parties involved, Jade (an exotic dancer-cum-Stu’s accidental bride) manages to forget her maternal responsibilities and leaves her infant in a closet at the scene of the crime: Doug’s bachelor suite, which resembles the aftermath of Hiroshima, but with more neon and an elaborately assembled beer-amid. When she is later reunited with her child, Heather Graham’s portrayal of Jade is such that she didn’t really mind that he was missing in the first place and any heartfelt connection between mother and child is simply non-existent. Her immediate uncovering of her blouse to breastfeed is not only un-believable, but vulgarizes the sacred act as Alan ogles her exposed nipple.
• Las Vegas has its share of magicians from The Amazing Jonathan to Lance Burton to the world-renowned David Copperfield and the comic-stylists Penn & Teller, but the act of trespassing into Mike Tyson’s Nevada compound to cat-nap a Bengal tiger - - amidst more surveillance cameras - - return it to a hotel room through the hustle and bustle of The Strip and past any curious guests’ and employees watchful eyes in the lobby and hallways of Caesars Palace is an act I’d like to see to believe. However, Phillips may continue to keep that hand close to his chest. Besides, the sequence (gag) has so many holes, it would surely collapse upon itself before its secrets ever reached the director’s cut and/or DVD commentary track.
• Regarding the surveillance cameras in the movie with no one paying them any attention, I’m reminded of the old adage: the light’s on, but no one’s home. There is an unmistakable significance with relation to the movie’s production.
• A doctor (one of the most empathetic of professions) not only gives short shrift to Phil upon his inquiring after Doug’s (dis) appearance in a hospital, but also showers the men with unjustifiable expletives. Police officers also instigate a group of school children to take turns firing a taser gun at Stu, Doug and Alan. The scene isn’t so much gut-bustingly funny as it is undeniably sadistic.
• That a naked Chinese man would survive a few minutes of triple-digit Las Vegas heat - - let alone roughly twelve hours - - in the trunk of a car and still have the energy to pounce on his prey and inflict several blows with a baseball bat … before running naked across an expanse of desert space and managing to reconnect with his gang of thugs without getting arrested by local law enforcement for indecent exposure.
• Most mattresses I’ve ever encountered in my lifetime are so tightly-knit and threaded that they’d likely bounce off of a statue rather than be impaled by one.
• After Doug is recovered at the climax of the film and found horribly sunburned on the roof of Caesars Palace, his best men decide to drive to the wedding in Los Angeles with the top down in Doug’s father’s Mercedes convertible.

Film directors are welcome to take liberties with their actors and develop the action in any way they please for the sake of entertainment and to whichever conclusion they wish to fashion - - but Mr. Phillips’ movie is a veritable display of cliché (Keanu Reeves and Lori Loughlin starred in the [cult] film, THE NIGHT BEFORE [1988] that is not only a very amusing coming-of-age film re: mistaken identity, flashbacks and Reeves’ character forgetting how he got to where he is ‘the night after’, the similarities between the films is apparent and might be considered a direct ancestor to Phillips’ movie.), wholly unbelievable plotting and is a downright disrespectable guilty pleasure. But not the guilty pleasure you’re familiar with: whereas one often connotes cinema to a visual or aural ‘guilty pleasure’, THE HANGOVER is a movie in violation of any such amusement or intelligent stimulation.

Often when one consumes an alcoholic beverage in a film, the result of such absorption can lead to an adventurous, romantic or depressing outcome. Like a magic potion, it can take the character to a new environment he never thought existed or chance sinking to the deepest depths or rising to the highest heights: the libation can poison as it exhibits the innocent shade of pure white milk (SUSPICION); it can make one live forever … for a price (DEATH BECOMES HER); it can be a metaphoric Molotov cocktail on one’s spirit and the monkey on one’s back (WRITTEN ON THE WIND) or the signature drink of a super spy mixed the way he likes it to calm his nerves (GOLDFINGER). When applied to a film in a specific manner, alcohol can be something more significant than just a typical social stimulant/lubricant. Alice can relate to that just after she stumbled down the rabbit hole. If only we found out that the Jagermeister in THE HANGOVER was part of some devious megalomaniacal plot of a group of cunning Nazi war criminals (or any modern type super party, take your pick) to smuggle uranium (ala NOTORIOUS) dust (or any type element, you may again choose) into the United States who are in cahoots with an underground gambling syndicate in Las Vegas bent on dominating the Western World - - that would make for an exciting (and equally silly) adjustment to the plot.

That THE HANGOVER has remained within the top three box-office positions since it’s emergence in theatres (and the release of this review) is testament to the contemporary viewing attitudes that exist. It would be a different matter altogether if it were to shake the foundation of subversive cinema to its core. Films have a unique way of distorting reality once the lights go out and our fears and delights are captured on the screen before us. But there is nothing truly subversive about THE HANGOVER to speak of and if you strip it of its disrespectful repartee that is doubling for its comedy and the countless, awkward one-liners served up like shots at a Tijuana Quinceañera, you’re left with something that is no more hilarious and un-funny than it is deplorable. Unless it’s absolutely necessary to a script/film, profanity is the easiest and most abused cop-out - - why would a filmmaker want to restrict himself and his content?

This isn’t subversive filmmaking. It’s not even risky filmmaking. It’s Phillips doing what he thinks is in vogue. I attended a screening of GUNGA DIN recently which was introduced by the filmmaker’s son, George Stevens, Jr. He commented that when he was in the passenger seat driving home from an Oscar ceremony with his father and the Oscar statuette his father had won that evening was sitting between them, George, Sr. leaned over to his son and remarked in so many words, “In 25 years, we’ll see how good this film really is.” The ultimate pity about THE HANGOVER and so many contemporary movies like it is that they too often date themselves: throughout the movie are plastered images of show billboards and erected casinos that may soon no longer exist. Too often, filmmakers shoot what they think is fashionable and not take the risks that the MY MAN GODFREY’s and the BRINGING UP BABY’s have done before them degrading themselves and their film to a base level entertainment. That studios take risks on producing (and re-making) these films leaves no doubt we’re in a constant period of flux where the moguls invest in the “safe” films that have been manufactured time and time again only to be accepted with open arms in the quiet solitude of the darkened theatre. It’s an ever-moving, ever-winding vicious circle.

I need a drink …