Weekend flicks: "Bruno" and "My Sister's Keeper"

I saw "Bruno" on Saturday afternoon.  After that experience, I felt like I needed to see a real movie with characters and a plot and emotional catharsis, so on Sunday I went to see "My Sister's Keeper." 

"Bruno" is, quite literally, a mess.  It centers around a bizarre caricature of a gay "fashionista" portrayed by Sacha Baron Cohen, in effect reprising his "Borat" shtick in a different persona.  But this is much less effective, much less coherent, much much less imaginative, and much much much less funny.  I will admit that there were a few bits of shtick that had me laughing out loud, but a lot of it was just teeth-grittingly bad to watch, gross, sick, and likely to inspire more homophobia that it was supposedly intended to combat.  The entire exercise struck me as pretty pointless, lowest-common denominator "gay jokes" stuff.

On the other hand, "My Sister's Keeper" is a real movie.  Based on a novel by Jodi Picoult, it sets up a poignant family drama of a mother who will do anything to save her little girl suffering from leukemia, to the extent of conceiving another child to be the tissue and organ donor to save the first daughter's life.  Throw in a dyslexic son, a husband far below his wife in academic attainment (she's a lawyer, he's a fireman), and you've got a real stew.  Then throw in Alec Baldwin as the lawyer hired by the younger daughter to represent her in a lawsuit against her parents seeking "medical emancipation" before they can force her to donate a kidney to her dying sister in a last-gasp hope to keep her alive.... I won't give away the plot twist that resolves it all.  

This is a total tear-jerker.  It really had me going.  The author has done everything to wring out the last emotional juice from the audience, and the actors do a great job every step of the way, especially Cameron Diaz as the mother and Jason Patric as the father.  The kids are portrayed by Sofia Vassilieva (Kate, dying of leukemia), Evan Ellingsen (dyslexic Jesse, fated to be ignored by his parents because his older sister is dying and his younger sister is the source of spare parts), and Abigail Breslin, wonder-girl (amazing that a kid who is barely a decade old has a rather lengthy filmography... but she's really good, and finding a young kid who's a really good actor is pure gold).  So don't see this unless you want a really good cry - it will manipulate your emotions into pieces, and the courtroom scenes have more to do with drama than law, but it is a real movie.  "Bruno" really is not, even if it is raking in tons of cash this weekend.