In Theaters: Brüno

While considering ways to approach a review of Brüno, the quite funny if membrane-thin new comedy from Sacha Baron Cohen, I first lamented not having written about Borat in 2006. Then it would be easy: Just lift the copy into a new document, change some names and locations, do a find-and-replace with the words "Kazakh" and "gay," riff on homophobia for a bit, and end it. Done. And why not? If it's good enough for Baron Cohen as an A-list screenwriter/provocateur, then shouldn't it be good enough for me?

That's the general principle guiding Brüno, a succession of skits, gags, episodes and stunts conceived in the same ballbusting spirit (and the same narrative arc) as his and director Larry Charles's earlier hit. It's not the worst idea, either, particularly in a recession; if you were one of the Universal execs who rubber-stamped the $42.5 million (plus marketing) package that brought the project to your studio, it wouldn't be unreasonable to think you bought the creative team's original blockbuster recipe. But if you are one of milions of moviegoers still working off Borat's empty calories, you might find that going back for seconds yields a much more anguished indigestion.

Baron Cohen all but skywrites his intentions from the start: Confront anyone with the slightest apprehension about gays, ethnicity, fame and pretty much the rest of liberal culture at large. That includes his audience, greeted with a seizure-inducing keyword parade ("BLACK GUYS! TAINT!") before joining Austria's most notorious TV host and his "pygmy" lover for a roundelay of aberrant sex (don't worry, squeamish types: the fire extinguisher penetration is blacked out). But once the young man leaves Brüno, he falls back on his one true love: Celebrity, and the pursuit thereof.

His ambition naturally brings him to America, which welcomes Brüno with the same weary ambivalence it showed Borat. Again, if you've seen one, you've seen them both: The loyal sidekick (Gustaf Hammarsten), the downmarket accostments (Paula Abdul, the since-removed LaToya Jackson), the ritual humiliation of John Q. Public, the taunting of real-life terrorists and crowds big (and possibly surly) enough to end his life. Baron Cohen's thanks to America for his enrichment is yet another caricature of our ugliness, as though cornering a gay-converting priest or joining an Appalachian hunting party is supposed to tell us something we hadn't already discovered about ourselves in 2000 and 2004.

I know, I know -- is it funny, and is it good for the gays? Very much so, and enh. As a straight white male, I'm probably not qualified to lament just how politically inconsequential the whole thing feels. On more than one occasion, my colleagues have made persuasive points to the opposite, and I'm inclined to defer to them. That said, it's been a while since I've seen a culture-clash satire any better than the one in which Brüno shares his talk-show pilot with an unlucky middle-class focus group. By totally misapprehending the true accessibility of gay media and celebrity in an era when Adam Lambert couldn't even be out on American Idol, the would-be star slays both gay complacency and straight entitlement in one ungodly swing. No one survives, which can't be said frequently enough of Bruno's other broadsides (though low-hanging fruit like African-baby adopters do suffer some severe collateral damage).

But it hardly matters whether or not Baron Cohen is thematically on to something here. He's outrageous enough -- as much of an idea man as Michael Bay, really, which is just fine with Universal during one of its worst summers in recent memory. Here's hoping that he, too, like Bay, takes some time off between now and his next checklist of harassments to enjoy some of the smaller, more nourishing things in life. And that he doesn't require a trip to the flyover states to do it.