Bruno

Sasha Baron Cohen's 2006 provocation Borat was an uproariously funny bit of meanspirited prankery. It was not, contrary to a number of critical raves, a potent satire of American xenophobia. Mostly, it was middle-Americans politely nodding along to the heavily accented ravings of a mustachoied foreign weirdo. With Bruno, Cohen finds the mark and delivers a lacerating expose of American fame-hunger and, most pointedly, homophobia. While Borat consisted largely of Cohen saying outrageously bigoted things and people bascially ignoring him, Bruno features Cohen acting extremely gay and people basically losing their shit because of it. Bruno doesn't reach the audacious comic heights of Borat, partially because the shock value of penis close-ups has lost some of its impact, but the satiric targets are chosen with more precision. When air-headed Austrian fashionista gets a sucession of would-be stage parents to agree to let their infants undergo a series of increasingly dangerous stunts for the chance to be in a photo shoot, you see the sickness of celebrity-obsession in hilarious high definition.

Of course, there is another issue that makes Bruno's critique of homophobia problematic. Sascha Baron Cohen is straight, while his character Bruno traffics in a number of rather retrograde gay stereotypes, including gerbil-abuse. It's like if Cohen made a movie about rascism by dressing in blackface and flashing gang signs. Cohen tries to have his ass-cake and eat it too by alternating between raunchy sight gags about gay sex and pointed zingers about America's uncomfortable relationship with homosexuality. While it's amusing to think about the average Borat-impersonating knucklehead going from laughing at Bruno's fey antics to cringing at the pscyhotic displays of gay panic in the film's climax, there's a tinge of disingeniousness that sours some of the humor.