Will the Hype Kill "Bruno"?

A gay joke, an Austrian joke, and a ignorance joke walk into a room.  Your room, in fact.  And then they stay in there, for weeks, running in circles on your rug and jumping up and down yelling “Look at me!” over and over until you are like get out of my face.

This is a little allegory for the Bruno promotion strategy, which has been to waterlog every possible media outlet with Baron Cohen’s shaggy mug over the last few weeks.  I get that Bruno and Bruno are supposed to be inescapable, and that much of the comedy in the movie derives from Bruno forcing his uber-gayness on people who would rather pretend homosexuality doesn’t exist.  And I think it’s a neatly self-referential twist that the unavoidable Bruno ads and appearances, in turn, chase down all the other gay-discomfort folks out there whom Bruno couldn’t personally reach.  The movie, like the persona, accosts you whether you like it or not.

But at what point does it kill the joke?  You judge, with his Today Show interview, video after the jump.  

Had I never seen Bruno before, this interview would be riotously funny.  But all the jokes are – and feel – precooked.  Predictable: he’s gay, he’s Austrian, he’s dumb, and we’ve seen this, dozens of times.  How many ways can you skin a cat, you know?

Listen for the audience reaction while he lobs lines at Matt Lauer.  Granted the Today Show doesn’t attract the edgiest of crowds, but he doesn’t get a lot of laughs.  His overexposure has created the additional challenge that every joke needs to one-up itself in order to succeed.

For example, in describing his velcro-suit fiasco at the Milan Fasion Show, he says, ”It was worse than Darfur.”  Predictable.  Pause. “It was Darfive.”  Which is funny.  The joke unfurls, rather than plonks.  Let’s hope the same for the movie.

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