One of the biggest complaints about Borat was that Sacha Baron Cohen went after easy targets; the movie's gotcha humor was seen by some as shooting fish in a barrel, and some folks even felt bad for the victims of the pranks. That's changed in a big way with Bruno. While watching this film I honestly felt worried for the well-being of Cohen on more than one occasion.

What kind of a maniac sits down with a member of the Al Aqsa Martyr Brigade and tells him that Osama bin Laden needs a makeover because he looks like a dirty wizard? What sort of disregard for personal safety would make a guy playing a flaming homosexual crawl naked into a redneck's tent at 3 in the morning... on a hunting trip? Who would put himself in the path of hurled metal folding chairs after making out with a man instead of fighting him at an ultimate fighting match?

While Bruno may not quite match up with Borat in laughs, it makes up for it in balls (and cock. If you're offended by male nudity, stay away). And while Borat's satire was more scattershot, Bruno is political in the extreme, even going so far as having the character attempt to marry a man in post-Prop 8 California. Of course the question arises from that: is the political stuff well thought out? And is it funny?

It's very, very funny. The Cohen schtick doesn't have the same level of surprise for audiences that it had with Borat, so there's a level of laughs lost this time around. We know what to expect, and I don't think that Cohen ever really shocks us (although, as I said before, he does make us fear for his life). But the jokes are great, the encounters are hilarious and I walked out of the theater aching from laughing. As a simple comedy I can't recommend it enough.

But what about the politics? It's obvious that Cohen isn't a homophobe; the main joke of the movie is seeing how people react to gays and thus poking fun at our inherent homophobia. But a problem becomes obvious early on in that the Bruno character is such a flaming wacky joke of a human being that it's hard to imagine anyone not reacting to him cross-eyed - except in the fashion world, which is where the character originated, and where he works best. There were two jokes at play with Borat: one was about how people reacted to this guy (and a lot of the humor came from people being really accommodating) as well as seeing people have their own prejudices teased out by agreeing with whatever nonsense Borat was saying. But with Bruno it's very different - no one will agree with him. The whole point of this character is to shock the people he encounters, so you'll never have those weird moments where Borat's anti-Semitism gets subtly embraced by the interview subject.

That's actually not entirely fair; in the final prank Cohen seems to really figure out how to get that same reaction with Bruno - by having Bruno decide to go hyper-straight and throw an extreme fighting competition, Straight Dave's Man-Slamming Maxout. The event is completely anti-gay themed (the attendees are given t-shirts with logos like 'My asshole is for shitting'), so when Bruno (in the mustachio-ed and sort of Borat-sounding persona of Straight Dave) turns a fight into a makeout session, the reaction of the crowd is priceless and completely telling. One giant bald bloodthirsty fan comes to the point of tears. It's fitting that this is the final prank, because it's the culmination of everything Bruno had been trying to do to that point.

The one thing that I couldn't help but think about as I watched the film was how much of Bruno might be a joke on the audience itself. How will Midwestern and Southern audiences react to the graphic gay sexuality of the movie? On top of that there's a growing feeling that gay audiences might not be so eager to laugh at the character. I'm sure Bruno will open big, but what are people going to say about it?

8 out of 10