OK, I get it. That doesn't make your movie good

BRUNO. If there’s one thing Sacha Baron Cohen has contributed to our culture, it is most definitely grossing out audiences more than any other mainstream filmmaker around. With Borat and now Bruno (trailer), he has shown no, how should I say, modesty. If there's another contribution he has made, the next most significant would be to challenge his audience in a more subversive manner than just about any other comedian around today. If Bruno fails to live up to Borat, and it does, it is because in an attempt to be yet more exclusive in his comedy, he seems to have limited the “joke” more to his own entertainment than ours.

What made Borat so good was that, first of all, it was hilarious. The shocking humor, however, certainly ran much deeper than gags and was aimed at confronting people’s issues with Muslims and foreigners in general. It made us both laugh at the regular people we saw on the screen and at the same time question our own right to judge them as they judged the Borat character. He spent more time exposing people’s prejudice than ours, however, and so for that reason it was just inclusive enough to be a enjoyable movie experience for a certain segment of the population (meaning those not in a rural or southern area of the country for starters). That and it focused more on religion and ethnicity, which Americans are generally more comfortable talking about than sexual orientation, which he tackles in Bruno.

Again Baron Cohen recycles a character from "Da Ali G Show," which aired on HBO here in the States. Unlike that show and his previous film, he seems more interested in challenging his audience than his uninformed "cast." There are a few times when he confronts people’s issues with homosexuality -- notably a hunting trip with some rednecks and a visit with a couple of pastors who aim to turn gay people straight -- but he didn’t seem to really outsmart these people at all but instead made them just uncomfortable for our amusement. His most effective scene was a rather out-of-place set of interviews with stage parents trying to get their babies into a photo shoot and offering them up to do all sorts of inappropriate and dangerous behavior. This part worked well because he got the people to say outrageous and reprehensible things instead of making them squirm while he said them. The rest of his standard confrontational-style setups seemed, well, either too set-up (as in fake) or unmemorable. The much talked about scene with Rep. Ron Paul seemed to be included more just because he could than to achieve any sort of story-telling purpose.

The other attempts at humor revolved around him trying to gross out the audience and hope they find it funny. Like the exercise bike with a dildo attached, the choreographed demonstration of his favorite sex positions, and a shot of his penis flapping around and then eventually talking. And comments that made one cringe more than laugh. Most of these weren’t particularly funny, but I imagine to him they are because what he was really doing was using the audience watching his film as the people he exposes. He wants us to be grossed out by these comments and site gags and therefore expose our own homophobia in the literal sense of the word -- being afraid, not discriminatory, toward gay men. In a way this is more subversive than Borat and he is challenging his audience even more so in a way that ensures even fewer people get the joke. Perhaps that's his way of not imitating himself.

In a way I think it has worked and exposed how unprepared our culture is to deal with gay men (I exclude lesbians here because so does the movie) in a mature way -- even more so than foreigners. A number of gay-rights groups have come out hard against it calling it a minstrel show and it much a guarantee that conservatives would not approve of the movie. Even a number of reviewers have said that a movie cannot be a satire because it really just exploits stereotypes instead of commenting on them. Both these gay-rights advocates and reviewers don't get it. By accusing it of using stereotypes that are playing into his game and allowing him to make his point: they think there is something wrong with the character because at heart they are not really all that comfortable seeing flamboyantly gay actions on screen whether it be because of inherent homophobia or a movement of many "mainstream" gay-rights groups to promote assimilation instead of acceptance of "gay" culture to the point that they would object to what is obviously a hyperbolic representation. I could imagine a character that is unrealistically masculine or heterosexual (as even more respected action heroes, like Bond, usually are) would not get the same treatment by reviewers, audiences, or advocacy groups.

In the end, though, I think I got his point but I don’t know that it necessarily made the movie a success. Borat was a genuinely funny movie that I can enjoy on repeat viewings. The scene where he brings the woman the shit in a bag, for instance, was downright brilliant from the minute he walked into those people’s home. I’m sure he’s laughing his ass off seeing people’s reaction to his more recent movie. And perhaps if I watched people watch the movie, I could have the same experience of laughing at their reaction. But I can’t. So as a thought experiment it was great, but as a movie -- especially one whose aim is to be funny -- it just doesn’t pull it off. The reason Borat worked was because the humor and the social commentary were top notch. In Bruno he may have raised his social commentary a step higher, but he did so without making a quality movie to make this point.