Bruno
Probably my least favourite of the three major Sacha Baron Cohen characters, I did seriously wonder how you could construct a whole movie around Bruno. And the answer is that, well, you can't really, you just chain together a set of incidents with a very loose overall story. Which is fine, but does require the question of why this needs to be on the big screen, and I'm not sure any answer is all that convincing.

That said, there is much to enjoy here, with some of the silliest and most outrageous antics to grace the big screen in quite some time. The trademark deliberate misunderstandings result in some comedy gold, and some ultimately shocking ideas - I certainly didn't expect actual footage from the Middle East where he tries (and obviously fails miserably) to broker some peace deals. Certainly this isn't simply a case of picking the easiest targets to lampoon - perhaps in many ways some of the most ridiculous, but by no means easy. While much comes across as clearly cherry-picked in editing, and some seems a little mean-spirited (probably inevitable when sailing this close to the wind in so many places), there's certainly a lot to entertain and openly laugh at here. I'm deliberately skirting the issue of whether this is insulting to gay people, or exposing the hypocritical attitudes of people towards gay people, or both, or neither, because I'm not sure either that there is a coherent message or that one was fully intended.

I found Borat (CLoAfMBGNoK) surprisingly disappointing, though I had high hopes for it. I had much lower hopes for Bruno and ended up pleasantly surprised. C'est la vie, I suppose. Don't see Bruno if you're easily offended, but otherwise you'll have a lot of fun. Still, my opinion of this *as a movie* is significantly tempered by the fact that it isn't really much of a movie to start with, and also that it has close to zero repeat value (most summer blockbusters I'll try to see at least twice, unless they are truly unbearable or dull as ditchwater. But I had no desire to see Bruno a second time). Also it ought to have had a silly long name like Borat did, as that would have been more fun. 6 out of 10.