The character of Bruno is intended to be something of a funhouse mirror of the fashion world's perpetually insular world of name designers and hangers on who are completely unknown outside of their circle. The problem is that the fashion world thrives on its own ridiculousness: its already self satirizing. Thus while Bruno's fashion world hits worked well as bits interspersed between other characters on the Ali-G show, the fashion aspect of the character can't support a entire feature length film. Bruno is also a celebrity star-f*cker, but another problem lies there: Cohen is beholden to the same PR world to sell his movie, and too well known in that community to trick any of the media targets that are ripe for his blend of satire. With the comedy potential of those avenues largely blunted, Cohen is forced to amplify the gay aspect of the character to compensate and carry the weight. This is risky: all groups that engage in identity politics are hypersensitive to how they are portrayed in the media, and the Gay/Lesbian community particularly so. Its understandable given the long, and unfortunately continuing history of being used as a political wedge to win elections and the resultant social collateral damage: discriminatory anti-gay laws, epithets and even violence. Even so, there is a lot of political incorrectness that can be forgiven if the result is funny or thought-provoking. The key to evaluating this film then is determining how successful it is at meeting those goals.
The film follows the Borat template: exiled from the Euro fashion world, Bruno seeks another avenue of fame in the US, attended to by his mistreated assistant. The problem becomes apparent quickly. Unlike the Borat character who was able to elicit genuine responses because his behavior seemed to stem more from his background of poverty-based ignorance, Bruno is simply a self-serving a-hole. The sequences that play this up are the ones that don't work: Bruno goes hunting, Bruno joins the army, Bruno interviews some swingers. Bruno aims to provoke a homophobic response, but the "victims" seems to be responding less to Bruno being gay, than to Bruno being a jerk.
The movie hits its low point with an attempted ambush of former presidential candidate Ron Paul. Of all of the right-wing figures that would make tempting targets, Paul is possibly the least interesting. Like his left wing counterpart Ralph Nader, Paul is a true believer in his stances, and agree with him or not, he votes and lives his own life in accordance with them. On the hypocrisy scale, he's pretty far down the list. In that scene an attempted seduction results in a weird inversion: your not laughing at Paul (who you kind of feel sorry for), you're laughing at how stupid Bruno's awkward seduction attempt is. As he is exiting, Paul gets caught on camera saying "that guy is a queer", which given the circumstances actually comes off as forgivable. This is the problem at the core of the film: the reactions to some of Bruno's behavior read as legitimate, even when they should be indefensible. Unlike Borat's attempts at freaking the mundanes, which similarly aimed at exposing the ignorance and prejudices of the targets, Bruno's reinforce their negative perception by causing the people to react to his behavior and then positing that behavior as "gay". Bruno is a deliberately ugly and ill mannered ambassador. The counter-argument the filmmakers may give is that only ignorant people would read this over the top character as representative. That may or may not be true. I think they underestimate how many ignorant people there are out there.
Supposing they are correct, Bruno ultimately may be a film ahead of its time. There remains a pretty sharp dividing line regarding gay acceptance between the baby boom and older generations and Gen X and Y. The older generations came of age when there was little gay visibility in the media, and being gay itself was criminal and even classified as a mental disorder. Gen's X&Y grew up with much more exposure, with X-ers getting a daily dose of Paul Lynde on afternoon TV and John Ritter camping it up on Three's Company, and Gen Y growing up with any number of out celebrities, politicians, media figures, as well as internet exposure to every sexual fetish known to mankind, which has the effect of making garden variety homosexuality normally, boringly, commonplace. It would not be surprising to see if there is a similar divide in how Bruno is interpreted.
For all of the problems, the movie has some very funny moments, and most of them occur when the film is successful at shifting the focus away from Bruno onto the people he is interacting with. A sequence featuring parents who tell a talent agent how much they are willing to torture their children works well, also, Bruno interacting with a Jerry Springer-type black talk show audience, Bruno seeking anti-gay religious therapy, and Bruno and assistant trussed up in an enormous amount of S&M gear chasing after the "God Hates f*gs" people. A sequence set in the middle east takes what seems like (on paper) a stupid joke confusing "Hamas", and "Hummus", and raises it to a near dadaist level, ending with Bruno singing a warbled peace song while forcing Israeli and Palestinian debaters to awkwardly hold hands.
The film climaxes with the best sequence: Bruno dressed in Ted Nugent drag working a drunken redneck audience into frenzy before engaging in a ultimate fighting style cage match. It becomes a quick reversal in which punching and kicking evolves into making out and mutual stripping. Its a nervy and hilarious sequence which demonstrates actual anti-gay hate and violence, and it works largely because the gay-ness in it is divorced from the accoutrements of the Bruno character. It feels like genuine reaction, and it could have been the perfect ending to a better movie.
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