I'm Gay for BRUNO.

I don't know why so many people are knocking BRUNO. If you like BORAT (or THE ALI G show), it's pretty much the same thing. Although Bruno is certainly gayer, in every way imaginable.

SPOILERS STRUTTING DOWN THE CATWALK BELOW

Bruno manages the odd feat of making incredibly offensive gay jokes (including various odd objects in various assholes) and being incredibly pro-gay at the same time. Much as BORAT exposed peoples' ignorance towards various social issues, BRUNO does the same thing but focusing mainly on homophobia. By being so shocking and in-your-face about gayness, it brings to the forefront most folks' deep-seated discomfort with homosexuality.

Bruno has a number of highly amusing gags and some great jokes. What's weakest about it, like BORAT, is its structure. Fortunately comedy is one of the few genres where structure doesn't matter as much as in other films. If something's funny, audiences are willing to excuse a weak plot. (Musicals and Hong Kong action films are the other two genres where plot can take a backseat). Think about your favorite comedies. Odds are, while there are some amazingly crafted gems in there (GROUNDHOG DAY, TOOTSIE, and IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT being favorites of mine), there are probably some movies that are funny as hell but also sloppy (VACATION and CADDYSHACK for me).

Bruno's excuse for a plot has him going to America to become famous. And doing various things along the way to achieve that goal -- trying to get an American TV series on the air, trying to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, adopting a black baby because it's fashionable; and then realizing he'll need to become straight to make it big in Hollywood, visiting a gay conversion ministry, taking self-defense classes, and going hunting, all before staging a big cage-fighting straight-fest in his new guise as "Straight Dave," whose asshole's "just for shitting" (and then breaking down, stripping down, and hilariously making out with his assistant to the utter disgust and discomfort of an arena full of Arkansans).

Because the storyline's more or less the same thing as in BORAT, down to coming to America, trying to make it on American TV, fighting with his assistant/producer, and then reconciling, it feels a little familiar. And it's not like BORAT was the most tightly plotted film to begin with. And because 85% of BRUNO's jokes are all specifically related to homosexuality, the net isn't cast as wide as in BORAT. Where BORAT could make fun of homophobia, anti-Semitism, and a host of other issues, BRUNO mainly settles on throwing outrageous homosexuality at people -- whether it's Ron Paul, an anti-gay minister, or a black TV audience. This has the effect of making the occasional asides -- showing up Brittany Gastineau by getting her to say that Jamie-Lynn Spears should abort her ugly, retarded-looking baby; having a fashion model talk about how hard it is to put one foot in front of the other (plus turning, which is the hardest); or quizzing Israeli and Palestinian activists about why hummus is bad -- seem funnier than some of the particularly goofy, obnoxious gay antics.

However, the showing I went to was jam-packed at 10:00am on a Friday, and the movie had me laughing constantly throughout. And it also made me think about how most people react poorly to homosexuality, whether it's as blatant as Bruno's antics or the more sedate, "normal" behavior of the gay people I know. So I guess it works.

Public Enemies, Public Failure

I really wanted to like PUBLIC ENEMIES. I like Michael Mann, when he's not too self-indulgent, and am a huge fan of both Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. I also love authentic period films, especially when they're about a subject matter I don't know too much about (and what I know about gangsters in the Prohibition Era is limited to old movies).

A TOMMY GUN'S MAGAZINE WORTH OF SPOILERS AHEAD

Unfortunately, PUBLIC ENEMIES is pretty weak. It's basically a shorter, watered-down version of HEAT (not that a shorter HEAT would be a bad thing -- if that movie was just over 2 hours instead of 3, like you cut the subplots with Mykelti Williamson and Ted Levine, it'd be a modern classic instead of a decent movie that's way too long). There are two major problems with the film and a number of minor ones.

Major Problem #1 -- the film touches on a number of thematic issues that could drive the story, but doesn't focus on any. So the film isn't about any one thing, lending it a very scattershot, meandering feel. PE could've been a great film about a guy who loves robbing banks and how a confluence of social factors, legal changes, and progress makes that impossible; he decides he'd rather die doing what he loves than give it up. That worked great for two of the best Westerns ever made -- BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID and THE WILD BUNCH. Or, PE could've been an interesting study of Bale's Melvin Purvis character and how he does horrible things to catch a horrible person, becoming a monster in the process (the film hints that it wanted to be about this, when we see his regret at how his agent treated Billie Freshette and his self-disgust after gunning down several men, plus the postscript about how he killed himself later in life). Or, it could've been a film like BONNIE AND CLYDE, where an outlaw couple loved what they were doing too much to stop, and how it got one of them jailed and the other killed (come to think of it, that's BADLANDS as well). Or a film about loyalty and how Dillinger constantly risks death to save his friends and loved ones. Or a film about a guy who needs to retire but has to pull one last big score in order to do it (pretty much any heist film).

Any single thematic issue would serve to clarify the film by allowing the writers and Mann to craft the plot around that thread. Instead of bouncing around to Dillinger, Billie, Purvis, the mob, and wherever else we go.

Major Problem #2 -- There's nothing to the Dillinger-Freshette romance. He thinks she's attractive and she's interested in him. That's about it. We get a line about how she's never been anywhere, so we understand why she's initially attracted to him. But that's about the extent of their relationship. It's a major force in the story, and we're supposed to believe that Dillinger would risk capture to get her out of jail because he loves her so much. But there's nothing there that shows us why or that the two of them belong together. And once she knows he's going to end up dead or in jail and she sees his brutality (in beating a jerky customer when she's working a coatcheck and when he guns down people as part of his job), there's really no good reason for her to stick around.

On to the minor problems.

The film intros Dillinger breaking his friends out of jail, where they gun down innocent guards. There's nothing wrong with showing Dillinger's loyalty, but it's hard to like a guy if he's causing unnecessary deaths the moment you meet him. I understand Mann and company are trying to be faithful to the facts, but they made a narrative film, not a documentary. This could've been solved by making the guards jerks -- we see them abusing Dillinger's gang, beating them, torturing them, taunting them that they heard Dillinger got captured and will be joining them soon. And they're going to kill him. This would serve to do a few things -- clarify the gang's relationship to Dillinger (it's pretty murky), make the audience hate the guards so that when they die, we're rooting for Dillinger and his guys, and make us fear for Dillinger when we see him go into the jail as a "prisoner," better setting up the reversal that there's a jailbreak in progress. There's a lot of other brutality in the film, such as beating the guy at the coatcheck stand, and you've got to work extra-hard to make someone like a brutal thug (see the writing in LAST KING OF SCOTLAND or THE SOPRANOS for good examples on how to do it right).

There are way too many characters. There are literally dozens of FBI agents, most of whom are indistinguishable from one another and many of whom wind up dead. When the movie ended, and I saw Rory Cochrane's name in the credits, I didn't even recall seeing him. Fewer (composite) characters for both Dillinger's gang and Purvis' men would help the audience keep track of who they are and make them more distinct.

Dillinger seems like an idiot some of the time. Main example -- the FBI is on the hunt for him. He narrowly escaped death a couple of times now. They're based in Chicago and want him dead. So what does he do? Flee the country? Leave Chicago? He hangs out there, going to see a movie with a whore and her madam. While that's what happened in real life, it doesn't make his death seem like a needless tragedy so much as inevitable, given his poor decision-making skills.

Purvis also seems stupid often. While sometimes bad guys escape due to his men's incompetence, he also causes the death of several of his men by not listening to expert advice on how to apprehend fugitives -- including waiting for backup!

There's no one to really root for. The protagonist and the antagonist both have their flaws. Dillinger doesn't have a particular goal, such as fleeing the country or pulling one more heist to get enough money to retire, so we're just watching him rob bank after bank, often resulting in people dying or at least getting badly beaten, and for no particular reason other than greed. The FBI doesn't want to apprehend Dillinger for the good of society, but instead J. Edgar Hoover wants it to build his power-base at the FBI and Purvis wants to do it out of embarrassment/fear of being shown up.

Hopefully HARRY POTTER will be better, as that's the next movie this summer I'm looking forward to.

Boy Do I Suck

I haven't posted in ages. So I'll rectify that in a moment...