Bruno

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The movie is a toxic dart aimed at the spangly new heart of American hypocrisy: our fake-tolerant, fake-charitable, fake-liberated-yet-still madly-closeted fame culture.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

You'll hoot and holler as it strips down its targets and sticks it to them, hardcore. Baron Cohen is the pure, untamed id of movie comedy.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A no-holds-barred comedy permitting several holds I had not dreamed of. The needle on my internal Laugh Meter went haywire, bouncing among hilarity, appreciation, shock, admiration, disgust, disbelief and appalled incredulity.

TV Guide Jason Buchanan

With Bruno, Baron Cohen essentially turns a carnival mirror on society, and some people simply aren't going to like what they see. This is satire at its most confrontational and incisive.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Cohen no longer has freshness and novelty on his side, but he’s retained the power to shock, offend, provoke, unsettle, and most importantly, entertain a jaded, desensitized public.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Funny as it is, Brüno could not be as shockingly uproarious as "Borat." No matter how well retold, a joke necessarily loses explosive force the second time around. But a great gag is a thing of beauty forever--so, too, a comic performance.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Probably more gut-bustingly funny than anything else out there right now.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

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.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

The real genius, if that is what it is, behind Sacha Baron Cohen's crude, shocking and explosively funny Brüno is the fact that the filmmakers actually found enough gullible human targets.

USA Today Claudia Puig

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

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Packed with filthy jokes, insane sight gags, and body parts used in decidedly uncommon ways, Brüno is hands-down the dirtiest R-rated movie you'll see this year.

Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey

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.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Undeniably funny, outrageous and boundary-pushing, this further documentation of Sacha Baron Cohen's sheer nerve will draw an abundant share of "Borat" fans.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Is Brüno riotous? Yes, more so than "Borat," in which Baron Cohen's targets were ducks in a barrel and largely undeserving of ridicule. He doesn't aim much higher here, but his tricks are more inventive.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Crude both in form and content while at the same time capable of evoking explosions of shocked and, often, shamed laughter.

NPR Bob Mondello

Director Larry Charles has made Bruno a tighter, better-looking film than "Borat," which is not necessarily a good thing on those occasions when you suspect it of scripting rather than just observing.

Empire Damon Wise

A patchy, hit-and-miss comedy with a few outrageous highs and a lot of just-okay padding, Brüno suggests that Sacha Baron Cohen's in-your-face fool routine sadly isn't working any more.

Time Richard Corliss

The problem with shock comedy is that it works in its purest form only the first time. Where do you go after you've gone too far? No artist can get heads to swivel and stomachs to turn indefinitely.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) James Adams

Brüno is likely to be the funniest thing you'll see on a screen this summer. Which is precisely its problem: it's a thing , not a movie – if, that is, you believe a movie should be more than an accumulation of prankish set-pieces flimsily strung over 80 skimpy minutes.

Slate Dana Stevens

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

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Parts of it are brilliant; some of it feels tired and overplayed. Cohen has come up with some marvelous satirical motifs; elsewhere, he's just showing how far he'll go to get a laugh.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

There are some solid, outrageous laughs here--most of them involving anal sex--but don't expect a second lightning strike.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

There's good bad taste and then there's just plain bad bad, which is what describes most of Brüno.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Brüno is what "Borat’" was too well-done to be: a publicity stunt about publicity stunts.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

A crude, cringe-worthy, and intermittently funny affair that triggers the gag reflex. I sincerely can't tell you whether I was choking with laughter or keeping from choking.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Extraordinarily raunchy, occasionally funny.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

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.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

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.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The low points in this movie aren't just catastrophic: they're bewildering.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

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

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Forget satire; this guy doesn't want to scorch the earth anymore. He just wants to swing his dick.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

The film may have only the best of intentions, but it tries way too hard and ends up being shallow, superficial, and only sporadically funny.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

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.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

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.