Did parts make me uncomfortable?
Did parts cross the line of decency?

YES. And that’s the point.

The film isn’t about Bruno really. In a funny, and believe it or not, smart way, the movie holds up a mirror. He makes people like the ex-gay movement and religious nuts look like the dumbasses they are.

What a brave but arrogant opinion. If we and other people who enjoyed Cohen’s humor are dumb, then you must be a cretin.

I am in total agreement on the point about depicting people being torn between their individual values, and the desire to be polite and sociable. The Paula Abdul scene–and probably the Latoya Jackson seen cut from the movie–depicted that quite clearly. In an attempt to be polite to her host, she ended up betraying her values by using a human being as a chair–and then proceeded to say at length that humanitarianism was “like air” to her as she continued to use a human being for a chair.

But isn’t that a worthy topic of examination? Take the same dynamic and tension, and you have have people “going along” with Nazi Germany or “going along” with invading Iraq even though it had nothing to do with what scared us witless in the first place. It’s the tension between social pressure and individual morals.

What I found most brilliant about Bruno was how it worked on multiple levels simultaneously. Leading up to the movie, I read very compelling arguments that the movie made fun of gay people, homophobes, and the audience member’s willingness to laugh along at certain parts. After viewing the film, I found that *all* these people were correct! Depending on the biases and beliefs you had coming into the film, it would push a different set of buttons in you. And the whole point is to understand your buttons…to “know” thyself.

…and, as I mentioned in another post, I didn’t read anything from any major critic about what I thought was the primary target skewered by the movie: American’s insane compulsion to “be famous,” and how the insanity gets exported around the world.

And I didn’t expect the cage fight scene to be so thought provoking for me. It was the only scene, IMO, where over-the-top, raging (literally) homophobia was spewing on the screen. I kept asking myself, “Why don’t these people just leave the arena?” They kept shouting at the two guys making out as if they could “will” the icky homos away. One guy pounded his head, shouted, and (I think) was crying! It was startling to watch….

The two men interviewed from Hamas and Mosod, one of them suing, is very telling. The lawyer says “we do things differently here”. He is really saying “we are so backwards we cannot even take a joke. We kill based on people being the butt of a joke”.

This is akin to gang raping a girl who commits the “crime” of being in public with a man. The case I remember in KSA they even raped the man too!

So, yes, this movie does its job of pointing out how ridiculous extreme sides can be…but still, this type of humor reminds me of all the movies I’ve never seen and never will like “dumb and dumber”, “naked gun” etc.

The irony is while it points out the ridiculousness of the middle east’s fanatical taking of sides to the nth degree, it at the same time poins out how dumb we are to consume this type of crap.

Doesn’t ANYONE have the sense to not take this mans bait!

I think it’s all in good fun, but if you’re REALLY offended, then stop doing exactly what this man hopes for…giving the movie publicity that money can’t buy, in papers and news sites that wouldn’t otherwise cover a comedic film of any sort!

The man is a brilliant marketer and pretty much everything he does is covered legally as it’s SATIRE!