Playlist: Paper Heart & Bruno

I'm not sure what to make of Paper Heart? It's a movie about the making of a documentary that doesn't really try very hard on either account. Charlyne Yi is a--what? comedian? performance artist? I still have no idea--woman who goes around interviewing people, including a lot of Hollywood hipster friends, about the subject of love. Unfortunately, she's not a good interviewer and doesn't seem to fully understand what she's even hoping to accomplish (not about finding the answer, that's the point, I get it, but about how to go about finding the answer--she has no POV, which is fancy talk for "personality). And that's just it: the fate of this film rests entirely on the audience finding Yi a loveably charming goofball. That she's whiney and dull does not make that a winning bet. At some point she falls for actor Michael Cera and they fall in love...or not, I honestly don't know. But I do know they dated for a few years in real life, which just further takes the point of this thing and drops it off a cliff. As for the filmmakers' bloated claim that they created a "hybrid documentary," I won't tell anyone that only means they couldn't write a whole script. Sssh...

Then we have Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen's straight (so to speak) fake documentary about the quest for fame of a--politely phrased by Wikipedia--"flamboyant gay Austrian fashion journalist". I had reservations going in because 1. the Bruno segments were always the weakest parts of Cohen's "Da Ali G Show", and 2. it just looked like a gay Borat. Which it was, but who cares because it was funny. Cohen is an immensly talented performer who understands the most important rule of comedy: committment. If you're going in, go all in. Comedy is about the uncomfortableness of the truth and you can't be honest if you're scared. And even if some of the more over-the-top moments knock hard on the documentary wall, you accept that it's still a film about Bruno. Not Cohen. You're invested in the character, like him or hate him. So, it's not a fake documentary at all. It's a real documentary about a fake character. And there is a difference.

Quick endnote: Cohen's 2002 film about his signature creation, Ali G Indahouse, is an unfortunately underappreciated comedic showcase. If Borat and Bruno are raging caricatures, than Ali G is maybe the most ridiculous character ever brought to screen. There's nothing about him that connects to real life, but everything about him is real. That's mad skillz, yo. Booyakasha.