NEW ‘GAY BORAT’ FILM PREVIEWS

Critics have praised the first footage screened from the new film by Sacha Baron Cohen, which features his character, the gay Bruno.

Twenty minutes of footage – described as being as funny and as extreme as Baron Cohen’s previous outing – was screened at the SXSW Festival in Austin in the US.

Baron Cohen is known for his television spoof character Ali G and the satirical film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

According to www.aintitcool.com, the new film, which mixes fictional characters with real-life scenarios, again takes an outrageous look at American life, this time through the eyes of a gay Austrian fashion designer-turned-reporter.

In one segment Bruno meets various parents to discuss using their babies in a photo shoot. The parents, seemingly desperate to see their children in the limelight, agree to increasingly outlandish requests – including their babies posing with komodo dragons and being dropped four stories.

In another scene, Bruno asks parents if they would be willing to make their children lose weight for the photo shoot through liposuction. Frighteningly, a number of parents say that they would be willing to do so.

Bruno also appears in a Jerry Springer style talk show in which he tells the predominantly African-American audience that he want to find a black man as a partner. He then shows the outraged crowd ‘photoshoped’ pictures of his adopted African baby, who wears a t-shirt emblazoned with the word “gayby”, in various overtly gay scenarios.

The third segment features Bruno as a fighter, called Straight Dave, in a mixed martial arts competition which degenerates into audience chaos and violence when the character begins to kiss and grope another man in the fight cage.

“It was hilarious, envelope-pushing as always, but with Cohen’s talent to layer it with some real hard looks at who we are as a people and a commentary on how people really act. I can’t wait to see the finished movie,” said Aintitcool.com’s Quint.

MTV’s Robert Perez, wrote: “Bruno somehow makes Borat look like child’s play, upping the ante on aggressively offensive, squirm-worthy hilarity.”

The film will be released in America and South Africa in July.