Did Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest incarnation as gay TV presenter Bruno make you howl with laughter or squirm in disgust?

Knight of bad taste? … Bruno. Photograph: Allstar/Universal Pictures

In the US it has been accused of promoting the very homophobia it lampoons, and the critics are at times unsure of whether Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest film is possessed of a particularly admirable moral compass. What they do not argue over, however, is Bruno’s ability to make the viewer laugh out loud and squirm in equal measure.

The tale of a gay TV presenter fired from his job arbiting the sartorial sensibilities of Austrian fashionistas after exploding on to a Milan catwalk in an outfit made of Velcro, and who then decides to seek his fame and fortune in LA, often misses the mark as a social satire, and is not nearly as worthy as it seems to think it is. Baron Cohen regularly comes out looking just as vapid as his character. Yet the movie is saved a million times over because of the comedic skill and improvisational brilliance of its star in wonderfully set-up situations, although there remains a serious question over whether some of them were at least partly faked.

“Bruno is 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,” writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. “Here is a film that is 82 minutes long and doesn’t contain 30 boring seconds. There should be a brief segment at the next Spirit Awards with John Waters conferring the Knighthood of Bad Taste to Sacha Baron Cohen. If he decides to tap Cohen on each shoulder with his sword, I want to have my eyes closed.”

“This may not be every bit as funny as Borat and the latest film is – I admit it – a little further compromised by worries over fakery. Furthermore, at the very end, there is a disappointing parade of smirking A-listers treated with dismaying leniency and deference,” writes our own Peter Bradshaw. “But this film is still howlingly funny, staggeringly rude, brutally incorrect and very often just brilliant. It has some really extraordinary, confrontational moments that live on in my traumatised mind in a continuous loop.”

“While claims that the film is a social satire are as empty as Bruno’s pretty head, there’s no arguing with the fact that the film is staggeringly rude and very, very funny,” says the Times’s Wendy Ide. “The laughs build and build: it’s like surfing a tidal wave of hysterical bad taste.”

AO Scott in the New York Times is unusual in delivering a truly negative verdict. “In spite of Mr Baron Cohen and [director Larry] Charles’s high-level skills and keen low-comic instincts, Bruno is a lazy piece of work that panders more than it provokes,” he says.

“The episodic plot – Bruno comes to America with a sidekick from home (Gustaf Hammarsten), seeks fortune and fame, encounters humiliations to which he is obdurately immune and achieves a redemption of sorts – is a photocopy of Borat. Like a thrift-store outfit Bruno is an ensemble of borrowings, mostly from wittier, more inventive movies.”

I have to say that I agree both with Scott and his more generous colleagues. Bruno is most definitely a guilty pleasure for viewers of a liberal disposition. The movie is hugely patronising, both of gay culture and the communities it criticises. The term “shooting fish in a barrel” has been used in several reviews, and there is something incandescently facile about Baron Cohen’s approach and delivery. Yet it almost doesn’t matter, for just when you think you’ve got a handle on him, the comic manages to pull something out of his bag of tricks that goes screaming through the bounds of taste.

In many ways, the film has more in common with a horror movie in terms of its dynamic: it is equally jumpy, employs the same type of shock tactics, and caused me to turn away from the screen on several occasions. It also causes the liberal viewer to confront his own latent homophobia: I felt myself wondering whether I might be just the tiniest bit anti-gay because I found the sight of a penis bobbing around the screen, or two men fondling each other in a cage surrounded by baying rednecks, somewhat disturbing.

What do you think? Does it matter that Bruno is politically incorrect? Isn’t that sort of the point? Does the fact that Glaad have accused Baron Cohen of his own form of homophobia matter? Or that the film apes its predecessor in terms of structure? In fact, does anything really count apart from the fact that Bruno is achingly funny? Do please post your thoughts below.

Dakota Blue Richards Interview

Picked from an open casting call to play lead character Maria Merryweather in The Secret of Moonacre, teenager Dakota Blue Richards completes a remarkable double with this feat having been similarly selected to play Lyra in The Golden Compass in 2007.

The Secret of Moonacre is directed by Gabor Csupo and adapted from the Elizabeth Goudge’s much loved book The Little White Horse. In it orphaned 13 year old Maria is sent to live with her fearsome uncle (Ioan Gruffudd). But when she explores Moonacre Manor and the valley around it she learns of a curse hanging over this place, and the desperate race against time to lift it.

Did you know the book The Little White Horse, which The Secret of Moonacre is based on?

“Not when I auditioned, but I read it before we started shooting.”

The Hungarian locations look stunning, how magical was that experience for you?

“It was great because there’s a whole old part of Hungary which is so nice, it was the Buda side of Budapest. It’s all cobbled streets and big stone buildings and it’s just really pretty. It’s an old fashioned, fairy tale land.”

How were the costumes you got to wear in The Secret of Moonacre?

“They looked great, but they felt horrible. Every dress that I wore I was laced into, and there were loads of different layers, and lots of bustles. The way that bustles do up is they have one tight around the waist, one around your hips and one just above your knees. So you can’t really move your legs very well. That’s why all the old fashioned people used to walk like penguins. And then I had to get on horses and stuff, and to do that you have to be able to swing your legs around, and I just couldn’t do that.”

The restrictive costumes must have made it difficult to breathe too, didn’t it?

“It was hard because they always had to loosen it after lunch. They always wanted it to look like it was done up completely, so that there wasn’t a gap in the lacing, so they always pulled it really tightly. It was like having hyperventilating sometimes, you’d be sitting there breathing really hard but you couldn’t move your stomach at all.”

How good are you around horses?

“I’m okay around them, I’m not that great on them. I’m not bad. If I have a good horse I think I’m okay, but Periwinkle who’s the little grey one, didn’t like me. They also had her foal on the set as well, but they kept taking it away because it couldn’t be in the shot. So the horse would be standing there talking to the baby, and I’d be on it. It would turn round and start walking one way and I’d try to make it come back but it wouldn’t listen to me. I hate whips and things, people would say if it wasn’t paying attention I should pull it really hard, but I said I couldn’t do that. That’s horrible.”

Did you have to speak to it in another language, or was English okay?

“To be honest, when I was practicing, they just did it in English. Or there was the Hungarian guy there so he could talk to the horse in his language. But on the set you couldn’t really talk to it that well because it would be in the middle of a shot and it wouldn’t really make sense.”

Do you have to fit films in around the schoolwork?

“I have a tutor on set because it’s quite hard to always fit it around the school holidays, so what they sometimes do is start it in the school holidays and have the rest of it in the time just after.”

Is it good having that one-to-one teaching?

“Yeah, there’s no time to sleep or mess around. I find that when I go back to school, you’ll be sitting in a class where you’re meant to be reading, and funny line will come up and somebody will make some silly comment, then the class has gone and you’re sitting there for 10 minutes and everyone’s laughing at something somebody has said. My friends laugh at me because I turn around in lessons if it’s really annoying me and go ‘shut up, we’re meant to be reading!’. Everyone else is like ‘oh look at you,’.”

But you presumably have quite a strong work ethic, working around adults as you do?

“Yeah, you can make jokes on set but you can’t do anything too disruptive because if you disrupt things time is money and people get really angry.”

Were you a fan of your director Gabor Csupo’s work on Rugrats and The Wild Thornberrys?

“I remember watching Rugrats when I was little, and The Wild Thornberrys. I didn’t realise that it was him that had made them until afterwards. I thought it was really cool.”

Your co-star Tim Curry worked with Gabor before, was he good fun to be with?

“Yeah, he was. He’s one of those people who has perfect timing, he says the right things at the right time and makes things funny. So like some woman walked past him in the street one day when he was in Budapest and she looked at him, then looked at him again and walked over to him. She said ‘I’m sorry, do I recognise you?’, and he said ‘well it’s entirely possible,’ and left it at that. Everyone else was laughing but she didn’t get it.”

You must get recognised too though, have you got used to all that yet?

“Kind of, I’m not surprised when I see myself any more. I still point it out, I’m like ‘oh look Mum, it’s me,’. It’s funny because I was on the Sky magazine that my friend has at her house, so she says to me ‘oh yeah, every time I pick it up and look through it I always think of you and start laughing,’. It’s little things like that. I don’t get noticed much though, people don’t recognise me.”

Can you separate yourself from that person on their magazine cover, to maintain a real life amidst the film business?

“Yeah, say if for example if I have to take a day of school and people ask what I’m doing, I just say I’m going to work and that’s cool. And leave it at that. Or they might say ‘what are you doing?’ and I’ll say ‘ADR’ and that’s it. For me and all my friends it’s just something I do, they’ve got over the ‘wow’ bit of it, and they just think of me as anyone else.”

Do you get starstruck?

“I saw Gok Wan in a shop the other day and I followed him, I nearly cried. I called my Mum on the phone and said ‘I’m in a shop and Gok Wan is standing there!’.”

Are there any film stars that have that effect?

“If I see people in the street or something, that I recognise, I turn around and say ‘oh my God, did you see that person?’. I saw James McAvoy walking around Soho once, and I said ‘Mum he’s in a film, I know who he is,’. I met him at the Empire Awards, I think, he just walked over to me and said ‘by the way, I thought you were really amazing,’. I thought ‘thank you!’, then he walked off. He was really nice.”

Did you find that having such an unusual name helps in this business?

“That’s what my Mum said when I was little, because people always said my name was really weird and unusual. She said that ‘if she ever gets famous she won’t have to change it!’.”

You presumably have a well honed imagination as an actress, given your film work to date?

“I did a thing for tv recently, called Dustbin Baby, and there was no CGI in that at all because it was set in the present day.”

How was that for you?

“I found it quite easy, but because it was tv it moved so fast. I didn’t have time to think that there was no CGI or anything.”

Presumably when there is CGI you’re quite used to filling in the gaps?

“Yeah. I think it was probably quite good that I did something with so much CGI to start off with, because it means that I don’t get to a point where there’s suddenly quite a lot of it and I have no idea what to do. If it had gone wrong, a little bit, with the CGI and I didn’t really get it in The Golden Compass it might have been forgiven I think. But if I hadn’t done any, and then when I was 20 or something I did a film where there was a lot and I didn’t know what to do then, it would be a bit weird.”

THE SECRET OF MOONACRE: Out on Blu-ray and DVD on 20th July 2009

Emily Blunt shot to international prominence with her lead role in the multi award-winning British movie, My Summer of Love. Filmed in summer 2003, Emily played the mysterious, privileged Tamsin, who becomes the object of fascination of a local girl in this intoxicating romance from Pawel Pawlikowski. Emily won the Most Promising Newcomer award at the 2004 Evening Standard Film Awards, was nominated in the Best Newcomer category at the 2004 British Independent Film Awards and the film won the Best British Film award at the 2005 BAFTAs.

Emily started her career at the 2002 Chichester Festival, where she played Juliet in a production of “Romeo and Juliet” and her London debut was portraying Gwen Cavendish in a production of “The Royal Family,” opposite Dame Judi Dench. In 2003, her television credits included the British television drama “Boudica,” an adaptation of Agatha Christie’s “Death on the Nile,” the television series “Foyle’s War” and Peter Travis’s “Henry VIII,” a two-part television drama documenting the stormy 38-year reign of the king. Emily played Henry’s fifth wife, the teenage Queen Catherine Howard. She co-starred with Ray Winstone, Helena Bonham-Carter and Michael Gambon and the series won the Best TV Movie award at the 2003 International Emmys.

The critically-acclaimed Gideon’s Daughter, co-starring Bill Nighy and Miranda Richardson, was shot in October 2004. Emily played Natasha, the troubled daughter of a man who gives the impression of being more dedicated to his career and girlfriend than her. Stephen Poliakoff directed this drama about grief and celebrity, which is set in the intense summer of 1997, charting Labour’s election victory and Princess Diana’s death. The film was broadcast on BBC One in February 2006 and appeared on BBC America in April of the same year. Emily won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in Television at the 2007 Awards for her performance.

In 2005, Emily started work on The Devil Wears Prada. An adaptation of the hugely-popular Lauren Weisberger novel, the film features Emily as the intensely neurotic Emily Charlton, the senior assistant at Runway Magazine who is permanently on the verge of a nervous breakdown. David Frankel directed an all-star cast, including Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci and the film opened in June 2006, going on to make $325 million world-wide. Emily was nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category at the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs for the role. She was also nominated for the Rising Star Award at the 2007 BAFTAs, nominated in the Breakthrough Female category at the 2006 Teen Choice Awards and was honored with the Breakthrough Award at the 2006 Young Hollywood Awards.

Emily moved from New York to Canada in late 2005 to begin work on the spring 2006 release, Wind Chill, produced by George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh and directed by Greg Jacobs. Alongside Ashton Holmes, she plays a fiery, street-smart American college student who gets stranded on a dark and haunted stretch of road in the middle of nowhere. Emily next started work on The Great Buck Howard. Written and directed by Sean McGinly and co-starring Tom Hanks, John Malkovich and Colin Hanks, Emily plays Valerie, a self-assured publicist hired by a luckless magician trying to reinvigorate his career. The film premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival ahead of a spring 2009 release.

Emily’s next release was The Jane Austen Book Club, in which she starred alongside Maria Bello, Frances McDormand, Kevin Zegers and Hugh Dancy as a secretive, unhappy teacher who yearns for more than life has given her. The film was released in the US in September 2007, followed by a UK release in November 2007. Following this Emily was seen in Dan in Real Life, with Steve Carell, Juliette Binoche and Dane Cook. It was released in the US in October 2007 and in the UK in January 2008. Later in 2007, Emily was seen in Mike Nicholls’s Charlie Wilson’s War with Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Emily spent two months in early 2007 in Albuquerque, New Mexico filming Sunshine Cleaning. Produced by the team behind Little Miss Sunshine, the film is directed by Christine Jeffs and tells the story of two sisters who start up a successful business cleaning up crime scenes. Emily’s co-stars included Amy Adams and Alan Arkin and the film was Emily’s second at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. It will receive a US release in March 2009.

After working on The Young Victoria, Emily went on to make The Wolfman alongside Anthony Hopkins and Benicio del Toro. Directed by Joe Johnston for Universal Pictures, the film will get a world-wide release in April 2009.

Emily’s most recently completed project is the British black comedy, Wild Target, co-starring Bill Nighy, Rupert Grint, Martin Freeman and Rupert Everett. The film is due for release in 2009.