Before the fifteen-minute mark in Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen treats us to a slapstick sex montage evolving the movie’s main protagonist and his gay lover. You’d be shocked if it wasn't so ridiculous and cartoon-like in nature. Bruno spins and contorts his lover around like something out of Cirque du Soleil. Various gags evolving phallic gadgetry ensue: Neither character seems to particularly enjoy the carnal activities. No, the filmmaker's goal was not to create a fair portrayal of homosexual intimacy, but rather a cruel joke at the expense of the matter. This kind of makes you wonder, in 2009, how does a movie billed as a summer blockbuster comedy contain such unadulterated trash?

Perhaps western popular culture has hit a new low. Undoubtedly jaded by the Bush Years, Filmmakers like Sacha Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles prey on what they consider the destroyers of modern civilization. The vain, the stupid, the predominantly American. You know, the same people they burned down in their 2007 smash hit Borat.

The formula from their last quarter-of-a-billion-dollar outing is employed here with Bruno. I’ll let you in on Cohen’s secret for box office success. Create a despicably offensive stereotype of a character based on a kind of person that you despise (in Cohen’s case, a anti-Semitic Eastern European in Borat, and narcissistic Aryan male model in Bruno). Use said character, which within it’s own right, is offensive, to prod at real life people who you yourself, find offensive (in Cohen’s case, dimwitted Americans from California and Alabama, with the occasional Middle eastern Muslim thrown into the mix).

The people behind Bruno’s 10-million plus marketing campaign would have you believe that this movie is nothing more than a naughty shuck-fest aimed to take your mind off the ugly realities outside of the Cineplex. If only. Bruno is nothing more than a collection of ugly realities, lead by a disgusting ringleader who dances around the flames with a crooked smile.

In Bruno, Cohen cements himself as the clown prince of leftist elite prejudice, and if you find yourself laughing at his brand of ugly, cynical humor you’re either in his company or at the butt of the sick and twisted joke that is his mainstream Hollywood success.