I found maybe a quarter of the film funny. A lot of it fell flat for me. One of the reasons for this is that Bruno's character is unlikeable. There's no reason to like the guy. I found myself liking the Borat character during the first five minutes of the film. Bruno was (pun intended) a d!ck. We had no reason to invest so much time in him and feel for him. Some of the time, I felt for some of the punk-ees. ie. Ron Paul. I'm not a fan of Ron Paul's but I did kinda feel sorry for him.
I also think that Sacha Baron Cohen overestimates his audience. I think open-minded people will get the jist of what he's doing but there is a high level of ignorance about GLBT issues in our country. Lots of the people in my audience were cheering on the gay haters in the film. That's not a good thing, imho.
Also, after some initial moments in the film, the film has nowhere to go. The scenes at the beginning were so over the top that everything else after that seemed tame.
I found myself covering my mouth in a couple of places. I couldn't believe what he did in certain scenes. I mean, honestly, he could have been killed in one or more of the situations he put himself into.
I also found his assistant to be a weak character. His wrestling partner in Borat was much better, much more likable.
Also, is full-frontal male nudity becoming more accepted by the MPAA? If so, I think that's good.
Yes, idiots who think that gays can become straight through prayer need to be lampooned but even that moment seemed to fall flat for me.
There was an interesting moment at the end of the film where Snoop Dogg says something like "Bruno's gay and that's okay" something like that. That felt tacked on to me. It was sort of a post Prop 8 "Hey, homos, African Americans are okay with gays, really" moment to me. But thanks for the bone, Dogg.
