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“Hugo,” Scorsese’s first attempt at three-dimensional movie-making, may just change the way we think about 3D films. If only the story being told wasn’t such a snooze. Film critics will forgive the “Raging Bull” director when he abandons his pre-teen leads and dwells on the dawn of motion pictures. Bread and butter movie goers will simply roll their eyes and wait for the next bit of 3D eye candy to leap off the screen.

“Hugo,” based on the children’s book “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” by Brian Selznick, feels like a movie that’s been buried under a pile of heavy pillows. The attempts at whimsy stumble, the sense of wonder squandered by its somber tone. Even Borat himself, the great Sacha Baron Cohen, can’t inject enough humor to make “Hugo” anything but a visually striking snooze factory.

Young, wide-eyed Asa Butterfield stars as Hugo, an orphan who lives betwixt the walls of a Parisian train station. He’s a whiz with gadgetry like his late father (Jude Law), but his knack for nicking gears catches the attention of a surly toy shop owner (Ben Kingsley). Hugo has better luck with the man’s goddaughter (Chloe Moretz of “Kick-Ass” fame), a charmer who always finds a way to throw a $20 word into her conversations.

Hugo and the girl embark on a series of kiddie adventures like evading the clutches of the station’s inspector (Cohen) and trying to complete an automaton started by Hugo’s father. Their playful romps may soon come to an end.  The stubborn inspector wants to haul Hugo to the nearest orphanage, and the toy shop owner had his only cruel plan in mind for the lad.

Scorsese invites us into Hugo’s world with a series of sweeping camera movements that take eye-popping advantage of that third dimension. This isn’t gimmickry on parade but a filmmaker genuinely curious as to how 3D can enhance the movie going experience. Those vistas still draw our attention to the technology in unwelcome ways, but at least we’re seeing 3D put to rigorous, artful use.

The narrative isn’t nearly so inviting, especially when the story shifts to focus on Kingsley’s character. Gone is the magical sense of children making the most of a dangerous playground, replaced by Scorsese reclaiming his role as the nation’s film professor.

Scorsese saves what he imagines is best for last, a loving tribute to cinema’s earliest days as seen through the eyes of a film pioneer. The director’s technical prowess remains without equal, but including snippets from classic silent films only reminds us how stilted and unnatural “Hugo” is on even a cursory examination. And do we really need a cinematic lecture on film preservation?

“Hugo” may have some of the trappings of a children’s film, but young ones will be bored out of their Thomas the Tank Engine T-shirts long before the final act. Scorsese is an odd choice to helm a story aimed at younger audiences, though at least no one gets graphically whacked at any point in the proceedings. And even a beguiling performer like Moretz can’t make “Hugo” more than a grown-up film masquerading as fun for all age groups.

Cohen’s manic energy is kept tightly under wrap, a shrewd move without a logical payoff. You wait … and wait … for Cohen to uncork a slice of slapstick glee, and you leave the theater empty handed. The film prefers to saddle him with a flimsy romantic subplot that adds nothing but minutes to a film already powering past the two-hour mark.

“Hugo” might just give the 3D movement a second wind, but Scorsese’s affection for the new movie format could have been put to far better use.

Slash film:

Sacha Baron Cohen will indeed reunite with his Borat and Bruno director Larry Charles [Ed. note: both pictured above] for The Dictator, a new comedy in which the actor will play both a dictator and a goat herder. Paramount has set a release date: May 11, 2012, so this one is happening soon. And it will draw inspiration from one of the most revered sources of comedic influence: Saddam Hussein.

Deadline also offers up a logline: The film tells the heroic story of a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed. It is inspired by the best selling novel, Zabibah and The King, by Saddam Hussein.”

Guardian:

Zabibah and the King was published anonymously in 2000, complete with a strapline that promised royalties would go “to the poor, the orphans, the miserable, the needy”. It is widely accepted within Iraq that the book was authored by Saddam, although the CIA later concluded that it was probably produced by ghost-writers, acting under direct instruction from the Iraqi leader.

The book charts the chaste love affair between a medieval monarch and the soulful Zabibah, who lives unhappily with her abusive husband. But what appears, at first glance, to be a sweet, simple folk tale actually contains pools of hidden meaning. It was intended to be read as an allegory for Iraq in the years following the first Gulf war, with the king representing Saddam, Zabibah embodying the Iraqi people and her husband standing in for the cruel and evil US forces.

Saddam’s drama hits its crescendo when Zabibah is sexually assaulted by a mysterious figure who turns out to be her spouse. “Rape is the most serious of crimes,” she explains helpfully. “Whether it is a man raping a woman or invading armies raping the homeland.” Zabibah is later tragically killed on January 17, the date of the US’s first aerial bombardment of Baghdad in 1991.

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We shall see. Rest assure, this script is now number one on our “get” list.

When it comes to humor I’m super picky. I physically cringed at all but one of the multiple fart jokes in Pixar’s Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. I still don’t get The Three Stooges. Call me uptight. Slapstick without redeeming intellectual humor, toilet jokes, sexual references, and ”shock” scenarios do nothing for me.  So how is it possible that I laughed myself sick while watching Bruno? That’s easy. Because, goofy as it pretends to be, it is a pretty smart film. 

You’ve probably heard that this film is about homophobia, but the story arc is about what it takes to become a celebrity.  Frankly, both facets are hilarious. 

This satire has real teeth, and it’s also fair. I completely disagree with the reviews that claim it mocks middle America, puts “innocent” people on the spot or casts them in a bad light. If anything this film ruthlessly savages Hollywood. The scenes with stage mothers are so appalling that the audience collectively gasped and groaned. One hopes that this exposure will, at the very least, lead to interventions from Social Services and cause us to rethink some of the “entertainment” exemptions from child labor laws. Cohen introduces us to women who are willing to have their babies/toddlers strung up on crucifixes, dressed like Nazis, subjected to bees/wasps, and driven in cars at high speeds without restraints. (Personally, I hope this leads to actual arrests). One toddler’s mother adds that she’s okay with all of that, “if he’s got the job.” 

Other fun includes exposing a Hollywood PR agency that doesn’t have a clue or a care about the causes they claim to promote. When Cohen posits that his cause will be “Dar-five” (as opposed to Darfur) the  reaction is priceless. 

But how do the average folks fare here? Pretty darn well, if you ask me, and this film doesn’t make much of them either way. Among the only average folks in this film are the hunters Bruno camps with, who, in my opinion, comport themselves admirably, despite the filmmaker’s best attempts to provoke a reaction. Is homophobia alive and well in America? This particular snapshot says not so much. Even the military seems at ease (almost shockingly so) with Cohen’s antics. 

While Paula Abdul uses a Mexican migrant worker as furniture (literally), the audience of a local Texas talk show demonstrates genuine concern for Bruno’s “adopted son,” OJ.  A social worker is called upon to intervene. 

Sure, Cohen exposes some disturbing trends east of Hollywood. The two reverends who claim to be able to “cure” homosexuality are as ripe for satire as any stage mom. They raise some flags, but frankly come off as tawdry and confused and somehow not quite as sinister as their California counterparts. 

The most disturbing scene in the film is the wrestling match in which Cohen takes on an entirely different character who is boldly anti-gay, and who then proceeds to…well, shock the audience at hand. This scene is far more tense and frightening than humorous, and made me fear for the safety of the camera crew, never mind the principle actors. This is the only scene that felt gratuitous, and yet on another level it was probably the most insightful. In other words, those who came off poorly deserved it. The hooting wrestling fans were truly scary. And if Cohen had been clocked with that metal folding chair by the crowd he deliberately riled? It would have been tough to argue that he didn’t deserve it. 

Another uncomfortable scene in the story is Ron Paul’s “interview.” This segment is part of the celebrity story arc (Bruno attempts to make a sex tape with Ron Paul to garner world fame), and Paul’s reaction has been described by some as homophobic. I thought the Congressman handled the situation surprisingly well, but judge for yourself. 

About that fine line between stupid and clever: Mike Long is on the right track when he invokes Bill Hicks and Howard Stern and Penn & Teller. Not because they ”break barriers,” which isn’t inherently funny. But because their work is smart. You don’t have to agree with Bill Hicks’s politics to understand that the guy could write a brilliant joke. You don’t need to enjoy the entire Howard Stern show to understand that he conducts celebrity interviews that put Rolling Stone to shame, and that he’s used his radio pulpit to defend the First Amendment more vociferously, and maybe more effectively, than almost anyone. And if you haven’t seen Penn & Teller’s brilliant program on Showtime, it’s your loss. 

But Bruno isn’t for everyone. If you enjoy smart, biting satire, and you aren’t put off by coarse language or sexual scenarios, you’ll love it. If you’re afraid that this film mocks middle America, or that it ambushes average people, a la Michael Moore — your fears are misplaced. 

Like most laugh-out-loud comedies, this is best appreciated in the theater. And if you enjoy comedy that reaches — even reaches a little further than it grasps — then I highly recommend that you buy the ticket and take the ride.

Well, I liked it. That’s no guarantee you will.

Years ago, I did stand-up. Learned a lot doing that. One thing you learn is that there’s often a difference between the craft of comedy and what it takes to reliably get laughs. Some of the most inventive, impressive comedy minds don’t sell a lot of tickets. (I could name them. You wouldn’t know them.) But one act you can almost always count on selling tickets—putting “butts in seats,” as a venue-owner will say—is one that is big and loud and shocking. That is, there is The Fine Art of Stand-up Comedy, and then there is Getting A Reaction Out of The Audience. (That’s why many comedians curse so much. That’s why I cursed so much.) Turns out the latter is almost always going to sell tickets, and people are going to laugh for much the same reason a baby laughs when you play peek-a-boo with him. I think most people laugh at Gallagher not because he’s particularly creative in busting that watermelon with a sledgehammer, but because he had the stones to drag the thing up there the first time and smash it at all. We are surprised, and all but the most unpleasant surprise begets laughter.

So “comedy”—rather, the getting of laughs—comes in two basic approaches, wit and shock. The former takes skill; the latter takes immodesty, but both are saleable and, to the vast majority of people, entertaining. (Hence the basis for the fact that the vector of quality for entertainment points ever downward.)

Sometimes, and it’s rare, you get wit and shock together. Borat was that. The problem with the combination is that a whole lot of people are so offended by the shock that they have no interest in digging through the muck to get to the wit. They may even deny that it’s there, or claim it’s not worth getting dirty to find it. Fair enough. But Borat did find that combination at times, and many controversial performers do (and did) find it fairly often:  Sam Kinison, Bill Hicks (both dead too young, bless ‘em), Howard Stern, Penn & Teller.

Bruno, though, is almost pure shock, and for that reason it will probably make more money than Borat. Bruno is pure raunch. As I said to a friend who saw it with me (my second viewing, I must admit), “If someone handed you this R-rated movie and asked you to make it NC-17, what could you possibly put in it to make it so?” I was stumped. So was he. Yet, as I said, shock is a pretty effective kind of entertainment. Bruno works if you don’t believe in the possibility of moral decline from an hour-and-a-half of immoral repose. I laughed. A whole lot. Sue me.

So what’s in the movie? Well, it’s mostly “gay fashionista” Bruno doing, describing, pantomiming, praising, parsing, and peeling back homo – and hetero-sexual, umm, acts, to the outrage of immediate onlookers, for the better (or worse) part of an hour and a half. It is explicit and vulgar and unflinching. Because of that, it is also riotously funny. It is tighter (sorry) than Borat; no scene simply marks time or advances the (almost non-existent) plot without incident. Unlike Borat, it tiptoes up to some of the sacred cows of the left, though it comes nowhere near tipping them over. It takes the easy shots at Alabama rednecks. (Memo to Sacha Baron Cohen: there are rural areas and rednecks outside every major city—New York, Washington, Chicago. Go there next time and expose the un-popped prejudices of some of your smug coastal fans.) It zaps stage parents. It digs at people too nice to dig back.

What it doesn’t do is preach about gay rights. I think the whole social consciousness shtick attached to this picture is nothing more than preventive marketing. Sacha Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles don’t have any political agenda that I can find, and I’ve dug through this thing twice (the second time to hear the jokes I laughed over the first time). They just want to get laughs. By any means necessary.

Mission accomplished.

Oh, big city critics loved them some “Borat,” which spent 95% if its screen time manipulating, editing and boiling down average, working class, not-bothering-anyone Americans (and Romanian peasants) into the worst possible caricature imaginable. How they laughed and found genius and insight into the machinated savaging of everyday folks just minding their own business. But listen to some of them squeal and squawk now that the satire is turned on someone other than us. Here’s a sampling:

San Francisco Chronicle: 

Imagine if a white comedian went into the Deep South, disguised in a very convincing blackface and started acting like Stepin Fetchit.

Hollywood Reporter:  

Consequently, the character’s gayness reads false. Baron Cohen needs to spend more time in certain gay bars if he wants to learn how to do “flamboyant” and “fabulous.” It’s a ghost of the real thing.

The New Yorker: 

You can’t honestly defend your principled lampooning of homophobia when nine out of every ten images that you project onscreen comply with the most threadbare cartoons of gay behavior.

New York Post:

Not to get all PC on you, but the straight, outrageously dressed Baron Cohen camps it up in what has legitimately been criticized as swishy gay equivalent of blackface.

So here’s the lesson: Preying on unsuspecting everyday people, misleading them, manipulating them, pushing them until you get the reaction you desire and then editing them into something even worse, is a-okay. But… An obvious, over-the-top satire of gay men crosses the line.

As I said in my review, the only thing that mitigates the mean-spiritedness of “Bruno” is that, unlike “Borat,” everyone’s taking satiric fire. But now that the guffaws aren’t so one-sided, some aren’t guffawing so much. Worse, someone who isn’t gay lampooning flamboyantly gay men finds himself tarnished as a kind of “blackface” comedian. How interesting, when…

Everyday — on the big screen and small — we see Christians, Southerners, Republicans, Pro-lifers, Red Staters and the working class, ridiculed and savaged by actors who are none of those things. Where’s the cry of “blackface” then?

Baron Cohen is obviously a very talented actor, but there was nothing “brave,” “illuminating” or “ballsy” about “Borat.” Trashing the “great unwashed” is what’s known as a resume enhancer in Hollywood and Manhattan — about as “ballsy” as bringing beer to a frat party. ”Bruno,” on the other hand, actually is somewhat brave for risking charges of “insensitivity” (and worse) from the usual suspects.   

Maybe this is just the beginning for Baron Cohen, maybe he’s working his way towards something truly “fresh” and “brave” … something where he sends a Christian into a GLAAD meeting, a cowboy into a La Raza gathering… We’ll see what happens to a parked car with a “NObama” sticker at NYU or MSNBC, or to a screenwriter pitching a pro-Bush script at a Hollywood studio… Better yet, a Berkeley student with a Palin t-shirt, or a white South African running for elected office in a Democrat primary as an “African-American.”

Now that truly would be an ”illuminating” look at American prejudices, and one that required much less editing than “Borat” to make its subjects look bad. But maybe that’s just my prejudice talking.

The “right people,” naturally, are mostly coastal elites who loved watching the everyday folks they so loathe cynically set up and manipulated to a point where they could be edited into unappealing, buffoonish caricatures, which isn’t to say a few weren’t truly unappealing and buffoonish, or that when it wasn’t gross-out disgusting the adventures of Sacha Baron Cohen’s clueless foreigner didn’t serve up a few honestly-earned laughs. But just the thought of joining up with the superior, self-satisfied smugs imperiously chuckling from Hollywood Hills and Manhattan skyscrapers as their personal jester demeaned we peasants cast a mean-spirit over everything.  

With “Bruno,” and to his eternal credit, the Jester has turned on his masters and as we’ve seen in all those “Does ‘Bruno’ go too far?” articles, not surprisingly, many of them find turnabout unfair play. Because it’s now celebrity culture and other protected classes (gays and blacks) also facing Baron Cohen’s withering fire, suddenly what was once so daring, illuminating, brave and hilarious – guffaws at the expense of others – must now be met with beard scratching over “false gayness” and heavy, solemn pauses due to a “nasty streak.”

If you define politically incorrect as I do – having the guts to satirize the Left’s sacred cows (or everything Stewart, Letterman and Maher don’t do) - ”Bruno” hits the mark with an across the board ambush which, because everyone’s taking fire, goes a long way to mitigate the mean-spiritedness that made “Borat” such an exercise in elitist cruelty. The downside, and it’s a steep one, is that “Bruno” is relentlessly smutty and lewd, packed with full-frontal male nudity (much of it in close-up), outrageous but explicit portrayals of gay sex, and most disturbing, a swingers’ orgy with only the smallest of black dots to avoid an X-rating. This is easily the most off-putting film in years.  

A series of increasingly disturbing, ambush-style set pieces designed for uncomfortable laughter revolve around the thin plot of a flamboyantly gay Austrian television host who, with his faithful gay assistant Luntz, comes to America seeking fame, celebrity and to be the biggest “gay star since Arnold Schwarzenegger.” At first Bruno tries the conventional Hollywood route with an agent who helps to set up a pilot for a celebrity interview show. After this crashes and burns, Bruno starts to re-think the whole “gay” thing and hopes success can be found if he “man’s up” with, among other things, a stint in the National Guard, self-defense courses and a sexual re-orientation ministry.

There are some truly funny moments, dozens of them, in fact, and many of the situations are even inspired. Watching Bruno destroy a fashion show, take the adopted black baby he named O.J. on a Jerry Springer-ish talk show, get permission from degenerate stage mothers to put their young children in danger and criticize Osama bin Laden’s sense of fashion to one of his underlings, is to bear witness to moments of real comic genius. But for every one of these there are at least five seedy others that make you want to take a shower and go to confession.

There’s another comedy line breached that has nothing to do with the explicit content. Frequently the narrative gets lazy and asks us to consciously laugh only at the idea we’re being shocked – only at the idea of how explicit and revolting things get. You can almost hear the filmmakers bragging like children, “Can you believe we got an R-rating?”  

No. I can’t.

Over time the relentless nudity and crudity starts to wear. Even though you’re laughing, at the same time you’re hoping the next scene gives it a rest. But as the film rolls on things only get worse until – even though you’re still laughing – you can’t wait for it to come to an end.

As far as all the talk about whether or not “Bruno’s” homophobic , the answer is absolutely not. Unlike Baron Cohen’s victims, those everyday people who mind their own business, the Bruno character is fictional and obviously satiric. The only possible “homophobic” moment comes from former presidential candidate Ron Paul who calls Bruno a “queer” after the Austrian Fashionista makes a crude pass at him. Personally, I think GLAAD should award Paul a medal for tolerance. Gay or straight, Bruno deserved to get knocked on his ass.

I think it was Andy Warhol who said that after ten minutes of watching porn he wanted to have sex with everyone, but after an hour he never wanted to have sex again. That pretty well sums up sitting through “Bruno.”

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You can see the NSFW Red Band trailer here.

The second was the release of Keira Knightley’s new ad about domestic violence.

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Now these two videos have very little in common.  Cohen’s trailer is an outrageous piece of shock theater.  Knightley’s ad is a public service message designed to raise awareness of domestic abuse. 

But what both have in common is a willingness to cross all lines of good taste and judgment. 

It’s unfashionable these days to question artists’ taste.  The phrases “good taste” and “bad taste” seem to be out of style – we’re no longer allowed to ask whether pushing the envelope is morally questionable, or whether art can better flourish within particular limits.  We’re all supposed to buy into the idea that there’s a constitutional right to broadcast shows like Real Sex on HBO (there isn’t – the founders would have thrown the creators and purveyors in prison), and that censorship of such material is far worse than public airing of such material (it isn’t – did the country really suffer when hard core pornography had to be bought on the black market?).  We’re never supposed to question whether limits – even voluntary limits — ought to be placed on raunchy or sadistic material, particularly when such material is the subject of comedy or announcements of societal import.  

Watch the two videos.  Then tell me whether the public wouldn’t better be served by artists using some discretion. 

Let’s start with the Cohen video.  There’s no question this is incredibly disgusting material.  Some of it is hilarious, no question.  But it’s not exactly good taste to show a naked busty dominatrix whipping a faux gay fashion designer. 

Now there are those in the comic community who think that shock value is a good substitute for actual humor.  In fact, there are those who think that all of the best humor has to be shocking by definition.  Perhaps I’m more old-fashioned in my definition of comedy, but I believe that some of the best comedy doesn’t break boundaries – wittiness can be as funny as a fat hairy naked guy running around a hotel.  And not only that — comedy can question beliefs and parody points of view without forcing the viewer to retch.  Classic screwball comedies are still funny today.  And Lenny Bruce and George Carlin aren’t the beginning and end of all comedy. 

Then there are the “public service announcements.”  Try these on for size:

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If these don’t gross you out, you’ve been watching far too much Dexter.  Businesses focus on workplace safety because they’re afraid of being sued, not because they watch ads that feature dudes with poles sticking out of their chests.  Men who beat women aren’t going to stop beating women because they see Keira Knightley getting kicked in the stomach – in all likelihood, they’ll beat women more, fantasizing about Keira Knightley.  Pushing positive messages isn’t any more of a justification for showing unbelievably graphic material than doing comedy. 

If this makes me too Puritan, then I guess I’m too Puritan.  I’m not saying that Sacha Baron Cohen isn’t funny.  He’s hilarious.  Borat was hysterical when it wasn’t grotesque.  But I don’t think the question “is this good for our society?” ought to be completely ignored just because someone utters the word “art.”  I don’t think shock value is the only value.  Sometimes shock value is worthwhile (The Last King of Scotland) and/or funny (Tootsie).  But not all the time.  And I fear that when we lose sight of the fact that there are values other than shock value to be considered, we surrender to the basest instincts in both art and politics.