YMMV / Brüno (2009)

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The bicycle-powered dildo is a real sex toy simply called a "Fuck Machine."
• Americans Hate Tingle: While most Germans and Austrians were fine with the Camp Gay humor and European stereotyping, they were less amused by Bruno's adoration of Hitler for obvious reasons.
• Awesome Music: Nessaja by Scooter, which plays over the opening title.
• Captain Obvious Aesop: Sacha Baron Cohen's goal when he made this film was to prove "All Americans are at least subconsciously homophobic". Given that Bruno is such a gargantuan stereotype, to the point of being blatantly offensive, all the film ends up proving is "People really don't like flagrant stereotypes".
• Crosses The Line Zweimal - More like eine Million Mal.
• Informed Wrongness: When Bruno rejects Lutz when he asks Bruno out, we're supposed to be on Lutz's side and see Bruno as a jerk for rejecting Lutz, however Bruno is in no way obligated to become Lutz's lover, especially since Lutz does try to coerce Bruno into becoming his boyfriend by threatening to leave him forever if Bruno says no, and when Lutz is heartbroken after being rejected, he just comes across as an entitled asshole rather than someone to pity.
• Nausea Fuel: A good number of scenes...
  • The sex scene between Bruno and Diesel near the beginning of the movie especially. You way want some Brain Bleach after watching it...
• One-Scene Wonder: Harrison Ford gets one of the biggest laughs in literally two seconds of screen time.
• Strawman Has a Point: Sacha Baron Cohen claimed he was trying to expose the "undercurrent of homophobia" in American society, and does this by basically sexually harassing every man he sees. It's enough to make anyone want to get away from him, and many demonstrations of "hate" we see in the film mostly come off as sane people reacting normally to an incredibly offensive and irritating individual. For example, he tries to make a sex tape with Ron Paul (rather than choosing a more homophobic politician) just for the sake of cracking a Ru Paul joke afterwards.
• Tough Act to Follow: Didn't get anywhere near as positive a reaction as Borat at the box office. While it opened as big, its second weekend fell a staggering amount (nearly 75%) to a single-digit-million-take after pulling north of $30 million the week before. One of its biggest criticisms was that it followed a lot of the same beats as Borat, right down to the shock value, but didn't seem to have anything to say about what it was showing.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • A big part of the reason the film didn't do as well as Borat was its lead character. While Borat was depicted more of an Innocent Bigot who earnestly wanted to learn about America, Brüno is portrayed as vain, openly rude towards his interviewees (and therefore much more annoying) and obsessed with shallow things like kinky sex and popularity.
  • Also Bruno's assistant Lutz. We're supposed to feel bad for him because Bruno wouldn't accept him as his lover. However it's worth noting that Lutz actually tried to force Bruno into becoming his lover, telling him if he doesn't accept him, he will leave him, which he does when Bruno rightfully tells him no, and prior to that, Lutz got Bruno drunk to have sex with him and trap each other in bondage gear, so after all that, of course Bruno is going to say no to him. As a result, Despite the film trying to portray Lutz as this sweet and humble man who Bruno walks all over, he instead comes off as an entitled creep who is no better than Bruno.
• Values Dissonance: The film had to be cut in America to avoid an NC-17 rating, yet in Austria, the film received a mere 14 rating uncut. In Austria, there are 6 main ratings: 0, 6, 10, 12, 14, and 16, and only the 16 rating is legally restricted.

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