Sacha Baron Cohen: Julliard-trained artist who seems
tailor-made to star in modern-day movie musicals. Or, if you go by the majority
of films where he is the lead actor, a professional troll with the comparable
intelligence of the average Youtube commenter. Seriously, look at his
in-character work like Borat, Bruno and The Dictator, and then look at his
other roles in Sweeney Todd, Les Miserables and even his non-singing role in
Hugo. This isn’t so much a showcase of range, as much as it is possible
evidence of a secret twin sibling and/or malformed cloning experiment. For the
record, I like a fair bit of Sacha’s
work; I mean, Borat is probably one of the better mockumentaries to have been
made and Bruno’s talking penis has burned into my brain ever since I first
watched that particular feature. Sure, I’d much rather hear that voice put to Sondheim than to sophomore, but I have a certain appreciation for his style of extremely abrasive
sense of humour. Still, even with that in mind, today’s film isn’t looking too
good, to the point where all I can hope for is that Mark Strong finds a way to
salvage this whole thing. One can only hope that he doesn’t have to.
