Sacha Baron Cohen takes over the box office again, this time with his gay Austrian fame seeker in the mockumentary, Bruno. Taking in about 30 million, despite the overall slightly weakened amount of people flooding down to the theaters, Bruno still caught the eyes of people who took in Borat and loved it just like myself. With what appears to have possibly been in some people’s minds as a fight for first between the teen comedy I Love You, Beth Cooper and Bruno, the second of the two won within the first round.

I Love You, Beth Cooper, starring Hayden Panettiere, Paul Rust, Jack Carpenter and others, did not perform as well as it could have. Only scratching at the surface with 4.9 million, this high school graduation night film did not reach out towards its target audience as well as it could have. Possibly, if the film would have been released around early June which is technically high school graduation time, I’m sure the appeal of it to the teenage masses would have drawn in more sales, but that’s just me.

Everything else maintained the same sales as the previous week, except for the now slowly falling Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Even though it did break some box office records and has a hefty profit from tickets, the robot friendly movie is sliding itself down into third with 24.2 million. The rest of the box office is listed below:

Weekend Box Office (July 10-12)

1. Bruno  ($30.6 Million)
2. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs  ($27.6 Million)
3. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen  ($24.2 Million)
4. Public Enemies  ($13.7 Million)
5. The Proposal  ($10.6 Million)
6. The Hangover  ($9.9 Million)
7. I Love You, Beth Cooper  ($4.9 Million)
8. Disney/Pixar’s Up  ($4.7 Million)
9. My Sister’s Keeper  ($4.2 Million)
10. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3  ($1.5 Million)

Get your wands at the ready, because this Wednesday is the release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Then jumping its way out into limited theaters is 500 Days of Summer, Bull and many others.

Throughout Bruno, one wonders if the point of the film is for Sacha Baron Cohen to try too hard. He might have been with his previous effort Borat, with the difference being that film felt natural. That’s not to say Baron Cohen’s latest venture doesn’t as it’s amazing he pulled so many people in on the joke. Yet parts of it feel too scripted or that Sacha feels the need to top what he did before. Being fair, it was easier to accomplish this the first time around before Borat took the world by storm. While that movie poked fun at how inept foreigners are to our country, Bruno is a pure mockery of religion and people’s perception of homosexuals in general.

Baron Cohen does what he does best and becomes Bruno, giving him a solid back story and transforming himself. It doesn’t need to be stated, but one believes this guy actually exists. It’s a tougher sale than Borat, obviously, but Baron Cohen makes it all gel together nicely. Essentially they’re both the same character as both are obnoxious and loud with one being gay and the other being a foreigner. Both films do share similar structure as it begins with the back story, then why the lead has to come to America, and the crazy shenanigans each gets in to. Where they differ is how each goes about getting the shock value. Here, Bruno is more about offending people by being the biggest homosexual on the planet and often times, it’s offensively hilarious.

The best, and funniest, bit happens when Bruno visits a preacher in Alabama to turn him straight. Many times the preacher mentions Jesus only to prompt Bruno to make comments about the preacher possibly being gay. The hilarity is intercut with Bruno going to boot camp to give the army a different flavor. It does border on being juvenile, but it’s forgivable given how funny the act is. Of course, he does go for the shock value and it works when he’s interviewing Paula Abdul to film his potential new show. Unfortunately, the furniture hasn’t come in and Bruno has to use the pool guys as furniture and as a cart for food, only to cause Paula to walk out. He also manages to grab a short interview with Harrison Ford that’s purely priceless. Bruno doesn’t quit there with being hilarious, as his interaction with a terrorist leader should make one howl. Then there’s the end of the picture that uses “My Heart Will Go On” better than James Cameron’s opus did. It’s certainly a lot funnier placement.

Yet it’s the moments when the film tries too hard that hurt it. The most prominent thing in the trailers involves the African baby and while it is funny, it isn’t as creative as things that come earlier and later in the film. Actually, it has nothing to do with the scenes being in the trailer rather than the general sense that Baron Cohen is trying too hard to drive the point home. Even at times you can tell this is the intent by the tone of his voice as he narrates. The feeling is also felt when Bruno mispronounces the names of potential guests onto his show to his assistant, Lutz. It’s also these moments that come off as scripted rather than natural. In going too far with some of these skits, Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles sacrifice the plausibility that strongly helped Borat be so hysterical. In addition, this one has a hard time keeping up the stream of gut-bustingly funny adventures that Borat was able to do so well.

Bruno accomplishes what it sets out to do and is often times a riot, even with two ramped up, and hilarious gay sex scenes. However this looks to be the last time he could pull this shtick off as he gave Borat enough time to blow over only to give another go at it. Likely, it will be next to impossible to pull this off for a third time. For this effort though, Sacha Baron Cohen turns in another hilarious time even if it can’t quite give enough hilarity as he did with the first film. Bruno’s an offensive, gross, and outright hysterical time at the movies that should piss off most devout religious folk. Bravo.

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

Bruno is NC-17

Everyone’s man-thong wearing giant, Sacha Baron Cohen, just got a rude awakening for the comedian’s latest film, Bruno. Apparently the MPAA did not find the laughs too appropriate for audiences when they slapped the dreaded NC-17 rating. Racy scenes were reported to seal the deal for the rating, including of one which supposedly shows the actor taking part in anal sex with another male.

Despite the black mark on the film, the twenty minutes of footage shown at the South By Southwest festival had everyone begging for more. With the quickly spreading word of mouth, and with the great legion of fans that fell for Cohen’s antics in his previous film Borat, Universal will be scrambling about to make sure that they can crank down the rating to R.

The upcoming Cohen film follows the journey of a homosexual Austrian man going after his boyfriend who broke up with him after the short adoption of obtaining a third world baby. The film is scheduled for release on July 10th of this year.