BRÃœNO A HIT IN US, BOMBS IN SA
Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest mockumentary, Brüno, has reached the number one spot on this weekend’s American movie box office chart, grossing a total of $30.4 million.
However, in South Africa, where the film also opened this weekend, Brüno’s box office figures were far less impressive, with the film only managing the number seven spot.
South Africa’s number one release this weekend was the Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynold’s rom-com The Proposal, pushing down Ice Age 3 and Transformers 2 to the number two and three spots respectively.
Experts noted that while Brüno film earned around $14.4 million on Friday in the US, ticket sales dropped by 39 percent on Saturday.
They say that this could be attributed to die-hard fans rushing to cinemas on the film’s opening day, but note that negative word-of-mouth may have spread, causing the noticeable drop in interest.
While the film surpassed the opening-weekend sales of Cohen’s previous outing Borat, Brüno may struggle to match its predecessor’s $128.5 million cumulative US gross.
The film has been slammed by some leaders in the LGBT community because they believe that it perpetuates stereotypes of gay men.
I quite loved it…. I quite loved it, simply due to the stereotype it portrays. I think that Sacha deliberately wanted to mock the ideas of gay people held by right-wing Americans and the like. As gay people, we can appreciate this and laugh along. Not at Bruno, but at those judging him.
It also teaches us to laugh at ourselves a bit, as I think it’s quite obvious that he has gone overboard for a purpose.