'Bruno' popularity plunges

'Bruno' actor Sacha Baron Cohen

Ted Baehr, the publisher of Movieguide, says moviegoers apparently are responding to his campaign to avoid the "pornographic" movie "Bruno," which contains "explicit nudity, graphic sex scenes, extremely offensive jokes and scenes mocking Jews."

Although the movie's take at the box office for its first weekend was $30 million, for the second weekend it plunged to only $8 million.

"The R-rated movie dropped 72.8 percent at the box-office its second weekend," he said. "This means that moviegoers across the country heard our call to avoid this movie, which should have been X-rated in the first place," he said.

WND report earlier when Baehr announced he was writing local government officials across the nation asking them to assess the content of the movie and consider restricting screenings.

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Movieguide suggested a local review of the movie to determine whether it fits the "community standards" for the individual cities and towns as defined by the U.S. Supreme Court in rulings on obscenity and pornography.

The court has ruled the standards are to be used to legally determine pornography and obscenity.

Baehr, who also is chairman of the Christian Film & Television Commission, told WND the movie is so bad it cannot even be described accurately in print.

"Local government agencies have a duty to protect vulnerable children and teenagers from this kind of material," he said.

WND is not providing a link to the movie's website because of the explicit content.

But Baehr confirmed the images include homosexual sodomy, sadomasochism, a fully nude woman whipping the "Bruno" character, lengthy close-up images of a nude man and a man with a champagne bottle in his rectum.

"The MPAA, the people who give the ratings to movies, is clearly off base in calling this movie an 'R' when the content is clearly obscene," said Baehr.

The ratings system actually is owned by six major studios and is intended to advocate for their business, he said.

"If anyone thinks that the MPAA is a watchdog group or some kind of third party organization looking out for moviegoers and their children, they are sadly mistaken," he said.

Baehr said "the public sent the message to Universal that this is not the kind of movie they want to watch."

"However, it's regrettable that because of the R rating, many went to see it that would have not if they had been warned of its extreme content," he said.

Among the offensive scenes in the movie, he said, are "depicted intercourse, depicted homosexual sodomy, a depicted orgy, and depicted oral sex (including an anal reference); explicit shots, including extensive close-ups, of full male and female nudity" as well as "obscene" language.

The movie was made by Sacha Baron Cohen, maker of the 2006 "mockumentary" film "Borat."

"Bruno" has been raising eyebrows since before its scheduled release in July. According to the German magazine Bild, Emil Brix, Austria's ambassador to Britain, has called for a boycott because of the movie's content.

Among the jokes that raised offense were Cohen's statement he wants to become the most famous Austrian "since Hitler." He also makes fun of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian who was accused of repeatedly raping his daughter while keeping her prisoner in his basement for 24 years.

Even AP movie critic Christy Lemire wrote, "Bruno is a one-joke character in a one-joke movie, and it's a joke Baron Cohen beats into the ground. He's a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashion correspondent who repeatedly shocks people with his flamboyant gayness. The end. In small doses – on the TV show and at the film's high-energy start – he can be a hoot. Here, big laughs come intermittently, and the longer 'Bruno' drags on, the more apparent it becomes that there's nothing to him.

"He's as vapid as the celebrity culture he's stridently spoofing," Lemire continued.

And from Entertainment Weekly is the advice that one's feeling about the movie "probably depends on your feelings about full frontal nudity."

WND also reported when the "Bruno" star raised security for himself after threats from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terrorist organization.

The leaders of the group told WND they were "very upset" their group's namesake and former member was featured in Cohen's film.

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