Brüno, which opens tomorrow, is similar to Sacha Baron Cohen's first film Borat, but according to the reviews it's more mean-spirited and has even less of a plot. The fake working title: Brüno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt pretty much says it all. Adapted from a character on The Ali G. Show, Brüno is a fixture in the European fashion world until he commits a major runway faux pas and is fired from his Austrian talk show. Along with his assistant Lutz (Gustaf Hammaresten), he sets out for America with the hope of becoming "the biggest Austrian superstar since Hitler." This leads to a series of sketches in which he foists his absurdly flamboyant gayness on unsuspecting Americans, from Ron Paul, to a "gay deprogrammer," to a group of aggressively heterosexual deer hunters he compares to the ladies on Sex and the City.

A scene filmed with La Toya Jackson in which Brüno gets her to eat off the body of a Mexican laborer and tries to get Michael Jackson's phone number was cut by the studio on the day Michael died, but other than MJ nothing is too sacred for a good penis joke. Many critics were shocked that the film was only rated R, since Brüno is shown pantomiming oral sex in great detail and using a fire extinguisher and a Champagne bottle while having sex with another man. Almost every critic was unperturbed by the film's ridiculous depiction of gay men, which they reasoned was OK since the film is actually mocking homophobic people (though it's still getting a laugh out of gay stereotypes). Their biggest complaints were that it seemed some of the "real" Americans were actually actors, and the film wasn't quite as funny as Borat. Below, we check out the reviews for Brüno.

Rolling Stone

Baron Cohen takes justifiable relish in ambushing the gullible and the guilty - clueless stars eager to latch on to a fashionable charity (since George Clooney has Darfur, Brüno wants Darfive), mothers who'd starve their kids for a modeling gig, kinky swingers into all kinds of sex except same-sex, bogus efforts to bring peace to the Middle East (Brüno confuses Hamas with hummus), and the adoption of babies as accessories (Brüno swaps his iPod for little black OJ and loses custody until he throws in a MacBook Pro). And you haven't lived till you see Bono, Elton, Sting, Snoop Dogg and Chris Martin sing Brüno's "We Are the World" anthem. The lyrics urging North and South Korea to stop fighting since they both look Chinese haunt me still.

The NY Post

The humor is more mean-spirited [than in Borat] and sometimes forced, a few bits don't work at all, and there's an inescapable feeling that director Larry Charles, returning from Borat, has staged some scenes with scripted actors serving as Bruno's victims... Bruno mincingly walks a fine line in exposing homophobic behavior and perpetuating wince-inducing gay stereotypes. Not to get all PC on you, but the straight, outrageously dressed Baron Cohen camps it up in what has legitimately been criticized as swishy gay equivalent of blackface.

Reel Views

Some moments of discomfort within Brüno result from a sense that the filmmakers are not playing fair. The spontaneity of Boratis largely absent and, although some sequences are undoubtedly unrehearsed, there are indications that some were staged. The difficulty in telling one from the other speaks to the craft used to assemble the production, but it also robs Brünoof a key element - the belief that Baron Cohen is using "real" Americans to illustrate his points. The "reality" embraced by Brüno is no less artificial than the one embraced by many so-called "reality" television shows. When it comes to making viewers laugh, however, Brüno hits a home run - provided the viewer is not easily offended.

To say that Brüno pushes the proverbial envelope is to understate the situation. The only things separating this movie from a hard NC-17 are some well-placed black rectangles that hide potentially graphic content. Even with that consideration in place, it's hard to imagine why the normally prudish MPAA did not slap this film with its harshest rating. An extreme pantomime of oral sex would normally be enough to prohibit anyone under 18 from seeing this with or without an accompanying parent or guardian. And that's far from the most outrageous scene in the film. When it came to matters sexual, Borat was hardly restrained or in good taste, but Brünomakes it look like a morality play with puritanical values. Some of this content is hard-core (in more ways than one). It is also at times laugh-aloud hysterical - funnier and raunchier than anything presented in the summer's surprise hit, The Hangover.

The New Yorker

Could that be Baron Cohen's cunning plan? Might he actually be in the business of revealing our cauterized senses, and the wound where our finer judgments are meant to be? A nice idea, but I'm afraid that Brüno feels hopelessly complicit in the prejudices that it presumes to deride. You can't honestly defend your principled lampooning of homophobia when nine out of every ten images that you project onscreen comply with the most threadbare cartoons of gay behavior. A schoolboy who watches a pirated DVD of this film will look at the prancing Austrian and find more, not fewer, reasons to beat up the kid on the playground who doesn't like girls. There is, on the evidence of this movie, no such thing as gay love; there is only gay sex, a superheated substitute for love, with its own code of vulcanized calisthenics whose aim is not so much to sate the participants as to embarrass onlookers from the straight-and therefore straitlaced-society beyond.

Variety

The humor — and it keeps on coming — carries with it an almost immediate sour aftertaste, as Bruno's intentions, and necessarily Cohen's along with them, appear far from honorable. As in Borat, Bruno's pranks are designed to expose people's presumed latent prejudices. But while the previous film got away with this high-wire act for most people, Bruno is more erratic, partly since one is more aware of the game being rigged but also because Bruno himself comes off as someone the world scarcely needs another example of — a self-absorbed narcissist for whom fame is the only goal. Cohen is critiquing this attitude, of course, but the film comes to share too much of this anything-for-effect mindset.

NY Magazine

Underlying all these gags-the funny, the crude, the funny and crude-is a hard truth: Flagrant gay behavior drives a lot of heteros insane. To be honest, I'm uncomfortable watching two guys with tongues down each other's throats, too, but at least I know the problem is mine, not theirs. When the hushed, arty Brokeback Mountaincame out, its couplings set against purple mountains majesty, many right-wing commentators announced that they couldn't bear to watch such abominations. To them-and to those who'll see Brünobecause it's the latest gross-out comedy sensation-Baron Cohen is proclaiming, "Suck on this!"

The Hollywood Reporter

Bruno's adopted African baby paraded before a black audience is not funny. It's embarrassing, as is any joke that bombs, yet the comic keeps going back to it nevertheless. This is one of several instances where an audience might experience both exasperation and tedium with the comic's relentless act of running a joke into the ground... We sense, as we never did with Borat, the comic behind the character. Especially when his accent keeps changing — from an unconvincing Austrian to his own British and even to a whisper of Borat himself.

Entertainment Weekly

The more uncomfortable Brüno makes people, the more he draws attention to their petty churlishness and homophobia. When
 he ambushes the maverick politician Ron Paul with a go-go dance, you can forgive a visibly shaken Paul for thinking Brüno is nuts - though that's hardly an excuse for calling him ''queer.'' Yet is Brüno the scurrilous man-tramp himself a homophobic caricature? My honest answer is: yes and no. Baron Cohen's portrayal certainly feeds into a stereotype of haughty flamboyance. But if one condemns the movie on that basis, then shouldn't we toss Christopher Guest's sublime turn in Waiting for Guffman, Robin Williams' inspired camping in The Birdcage, and so many others onto the bonfire, too? The bottom line is that Baron Cohen, even at his most scathing, makes Brüno gleefully unapologetic about who he is.

The NY Times

The film demonstrates, at a fairly high level of conceptual sophistication, that lampooning homophobia has become an acceptable, almost unavoidable form of homophobic humor, or at least a way of licensing gags that would otherwise be out of bounds. An early sequence that graphically shows Brüno and his lover exerting themselves in various positions and with the assistance of, among other things, a Champagne bottle, a fire extinguisher and a specially modified exercise machine, derives its humor less from the extremity of their practices than from the assumption that sex between men is inherently weird, gross and comical. The same sequence with a man and a woman - or for that matter, two women - would play, most likely on the Internet rather than in the multiplex, as inventive, moderately kinky pornography rather than as icky, gasp-inducing farce.

While something about the cover photo of Isla Fisher screams '80s, the mag's identifying her as the wife of a successful man (despite the fact that she isn't actually married) is so very '50s. But, there's also a guide to achieving a grunge-inspired "bed head" look, ripped straight from the pages of Seventeen magazine circa 1992. Basically, Allure is the perfect escape for ladies who have had it with all this talk of the ongoing financial crisis and the dawning of the age of Obama. When this much of your thinking is devoted to picking the perfect nail polish color, the only current affairs you have the capacity for are the backstage politics at Dancing With the Stars. Below, we rewrite the cover lines of Allure to better reflect the antiquated mores contained within.

• "I'm really happy," Lindsay Lohan tells Marie Claire. She and Sam Ronson have matching tattoos. "Samantha has a bunch of stars, so I got that," LL says. Then, pointing to a little heart, she says, "she got this." And! She is looking to buy a home "with someone." [People]
• Lindsay's MySpace message: "I love yams." Yams rhymes with Sam? [PopDirt]
• Sam Ronson maybe told a bunch of people: "By the end of this year, my love will be Mrs Ronson." [Daily Star, The Sun]
• Just months after she gave birth to his son, Anthony Kiedis has dumped his girlfriend, Heather Christie. His new lady is Laura Freedman, who owns a jewelry store in Santa Monica. [Page Six]

• Usher and his wife Tameka are expecting a second child, 11 months after the birth of their son, Usher V. [The.Life Files]
• Mariah Carey's new manager is Mariah Carey. [E!]
• Britney? Being shot for Vogue? Really? But not for the cover, right? [ONTD, via NY Post]
• Anne Hathaway is profiled in the new issue of W. She wears a locket with a vintage lottery ticket inside around her neck. "I figure if it was a winning ticket, it would not have been discarded," she says, "so essentially I walk around with an unlucky lottery ticket around my neck." She also talks about life after her con man boyfriend. "I have to find a place to live," she says. And she weeps a little. "It’s a situation where the rug was pulled out from under me all of a sudden. But just as suddenly, my friends threw another rug back under me… I’ve been shown such kindness. Not everyone gets that. A lot of people go through tough times alone." [W]
• Anne Hathaway also says after she found out about Raffaello Follieri's arrest, "I spent a week in shock." [ET]
• Kate Moss's house has been infested with fleas. She's forced to spend some time on the island of Ibiza with her boyfriend, poor thing. [Mirror]
• Major drama involving Oprah's mom and debt. [Rush & Molloy]
• A New York judge has thrown out a bunch of lawsuits by unsuspecting people who interacted with Sacha Baron Cohen in Borat. [E!]
• Forbes has a list of Hollywood's most overpaid movie stars: Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Garner, Jennifer Lopez, Jim Carrey, Nicolas Cage, Drew Barrymore, Will Ferrell and Cate Blanchett. This is all based on dollars earned, not acting chops; for instance: Cammie Diaz's flms returned a lowly $4 for every dollar Diaz earned. [Forbes]
• Hilary Duff's dad is out of jail. (He was arrested last month for contempt of court and selling assets without Hilary's mom's consent.) In an interview with Inside Edition, Bob Duff says: "Susan [Hil's mom] was very consumed with the girls' careers…We simply grew apart." And! "I was unfaithful to our marriage. I feel very badly about that and the effect that it had on the girls." So wait, whose fault is it again? [Perez Hilton]
• So remember how Josh Hartnett allegedly got all hot and heavy with a young lady in a hotel and the staff watched he whole thing on closed-circuit TV? Not true, says Josh. In fact, his legal team is seeking damages against The Mirror for reporting a "complete fabrication." [E!]
• Mary-Kate Olsen requested a seat between Gossip Girl stars Chace Crawford and Jessica Szohr at the Rock & Republic fashion show. Why are you trying to come between Nate and Vanessa? [Rush & Molloy]
• Paris Hilton thinks the documentary about Paris Hilton is pretty good. [AP]
• Michael Phelps is taking the $1 million bonus he earned from Speedo at the Beijing Olympics and donating it to charity. [Socialite Life]
• Poor James Franco is being ogled by freshmen at Columbia University, where he's enrolled in a Master's program. [Page Six]
• Ex-Beastie Boy Adam Yauch has gone from rapping to filmmaking and his company, Oscilloscope, is releasing Flow, that horrifying-looking documentary about the world's dwindling water supply that some of us totally want to see. [Jossip, NY Times]
• Alec Baldwin seems really interested in running for office. But if he knows the US government has long been run by men with Anglo Saxon names. "I'm going to change my name into a Muslim-sounding name," he jokes. He goes on to say: "I hope [Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama] wins or it's close because if it's close, that says something. A growing number of Americans are ready for the nontraditional. Where I would fit into that, I don't know." [Reuters]
• Alec Baldwin either did or didn't ram his car into a limo as he left the US Open on Saturday night. [Page Six]
• Ashton Kutcher launched a website called BlahGirls.com in which three animated teenage characters — sorta inspired by Ashton's step-daughters, Rumer, Scout and Tallulah Willis — gossip and comment. It's funny-ish, but some of the comments would get these girls banned here. [Reuters]
• This piece says that just because Britney Spears was on the MTV Awards and is making a new alum doesn't mean she is mentally sound. [Guardian]
• Mischa Barton and Rooney frontman Taylor Locke: Dunzo. [Perez Hilton]
• 90210 catfight? Shenae Grimes maybe called Shannen Doherty an "effin bitch." [ONTD]
• Teri Hatcher wrote a column for British Glamour and it was misrepresented and taken out of context in the media so that it seems like she is advising her 10 year old daughter to have sex. [ET]
• Amy Winehouse was so smashed after a festival gig that she couldn't manage to walk to the car and had to be wrapped in a duvet and smuggled out of her hotel. [The Sun]
• Kevin Smith talks about hot he got "the shit shot" approved by the MPAA for his new movie, Zack and Miri Make A Porno. [Salon]
• Beyoncé's new album drops November 18. One of first tracks is called "Single Ladies," but, um, she is married now, right? [Concrete Loop]
• Blind item! "Which music mogul treats his superstar wife like she's a servant? But she doesn't mind. 'She's Southern and thinks men should be the boss,' laughs one friend." [Page Six]
• You know Devendra Banhart, Natalie Portman's boyfriend? His new album gives him panic attacks. [Rolling Stone]
• The Veronicas performed at the MTV Awards but it got fucked up. [News.com.au]
• The Wiggles are Australia's richest performers, with more cash than Kylie Minogue and Russell Crowe. [Reuters]
• Ever wonder what the boys from Hanson think about the Jonas Brothers? Wonder no longer. [Perez Hilton]
• Hugh Grant had his birthday dinner with his ex-girlfriend and it made headlines. [The Sun]
• Lisa Simpson is divorced. [TMZ]
• "Great sex with someone may or may not really mean something. But it's a hell of a lot better than bad sex!" — Candance Bushnell to Cosmopolitan. [Page Six]
• "She is really very very very disinterested in fashion. She doesn't care. She wears her gym clothes from when she comes back from the gym until night. Sometimes she puts a jacket over it if I really beg her to, but she doesn't really care very much." — Susan Sarandon's daughter, Eva Amurri, on her mom's style. [AP]

• Rumors are swirling that Aggy will be making her "major" acting debut this holiday season as Dr. Who's "Christmas companion" (don't look at me) in the show's major 12/25 episode. [Gallifreyone.com]
• It takes a lot to replace Naomi Campbell. After, ahem, legal troubles prevented the beleaguered mannequin from walking in Rosa Cha's Sao Paolo swimsuit show, her replacement (a guy (?)) sauntered out in a Speedo, which he summarily doffed on the runway. [Page Six]
• And speaking of male nudity...Borat-style banana hammocks have hit the runways, hard. [News.com.au]
• Blind item!!! "Which Italian designer told a woman he was groping on a dance floor that he likes "slutty girls who dress badly"? She pointed out she was wearing one of his dresses." How many straight Italian designers can there be, anyway? [Daily News]

• Curiosity of the moment, Vogue-intern-cum-hockey-player Sean Avery, talks about his time at 4 Times Square: "I like clothes," Avery writes. "Always have. What started innocently enough with my first tie-dyed Chip & Pepper shirt at age 12 has evolved over a decade and a half into a closet full of Dries Van Noten, YSL, Dior, and Costume National, to name just a few." [E!]
• Making a mental note to never hit the beaches of Sao Paolo, where the press just savaged Karolina Kurkova's "cellulite" and "back fat" in a recent runway show. [TMZ]
• Charities feeling the economic pinch. [WWD]
• Tom Ford dresses Daniel Craig, James Bond. [Los Angeles Times]
• More on Vidal Sassoon's Habitat for Humanity project: [WWLTV]
• The cardigan is risky business, as Roger Federer found out firsthand: "Federer resembled nothing more than an aging Harry Potter, although one suspects that this was not the effect he was aiming for." [The Independent]
• "Recession-proof" fashion mag digest, Distill, aimed at YOU! [Guardian]
• Luxury market needs to get with the times: not taking advantage of online marketing! [Time]
• More retailers felled by recession. [WWD]
• "The reason that Yohji Yamamoto gives for staging the first fashion show in the Ancestral Temple of Beijing's Forbidden City seems highly suited to his enigmatic image. 'For me, the name sounded so beautiful,' he whispers, backstage after the night-time event. 'I liked the idea of the forbidden.'" ("What the hell?" I whispered.) [The Independent]
• "Femme" awards nods boost designer spirits. [WWD]
• Jemima Khan (aka Hugh Grant's sometimes-paramour) is designing a capsule collection for French house Azzaro. [ElleUK]
• Patricia Field for Diet Coke? Twenty-five limited-edition sets of four Pat-designed bottles (representing career, passion, love, and fashion) sell for $100 each on her web site or in London at Selfridges. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Following in my footsteps, Vera Wang to guest-blog. [Sassybella]
• Tom Ford returns to Milan. [WWD]

• OMG Bobby Brown's autobiography is going to be sofa king awesome: "I never used cocaine until after I met Whitney. Before then, I had experimented with other drugs, but marijuana was my drug of choice. At one point in my life, I used drugs uncontrollably. I was using everything I could get my hands on, from cocaine to heroin, weed and cooked cocaine." [Page Six]
  
• Madonna donated 100 copes of Vanity Fair to the Kabbalah Centre. You know, the one with her on the cover. Soooo generous. [Page Six]
  
• Beyoncé and Jay-Z: Getting married this Friday??? [Perez Hilton]
  
• Jay-Z is on the verge of a $150 million deal with Live Nation — one of the biggest music contracts ever. Would getting married first mean Beyoncé could be all, what's yours is mine? [Reuters]
  
• Jessica Alba's unborn baby is a girl, and will be named Honor Warren. [Star]

• Jake Gyllenhaal and Reese Witherspoon: On vacay with the kids in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Cute! [MSNBC]
• Ed Westwick, aka Gossip Girl's Chuck Bass, has been spotted drunk out on the town again. His publicist must be working overtime to get him in the papers, but he's so damn cute we're falling for it. [Page Six]
• Speaking of GG, Chace Crawford (aka Nate ) has had a rough few weeks after breaking up with Carrie Underwood and being accused of dating JC Chasez. But he's "doing okay," his sister, Miss Missouri, says. You can stop worrying. [People]
• Kevin Federline's lawyer says Britney's dad is doing a great job. There was a situation and that seems to be stabilized. Does that mean she's cured? Of course not." [People]
• Britney's manager, Larry Rudolph, says Britney will make the biggest comeback in history. [ONTD]
• Mariah Carey canceled interviews in London because she's "not a morning person." Viva la diva! [Mirror]
• Amy Winehouse saw a gang of paparazzi camped out on her doorstep in the cold, so she made them tea and brought them cookies. Love. Her. [ Mirror]
• Jerry Seinfeld's brakes failed on Saturday night and his his vintage car flipped over as he was driving in the Hamptons. Jerry walked away unscathed. [People]
• Speaking of the Hamptons, longtime resident Billy Joel's wife, Katie Lee Joel, has a cookbook with a recipe for "Man Loaf" that "instantly makes any guy fall in love." As the kids say, vom. [Page Six]
• "Everybody thinks I'm in the loony bin, but I'm actually in rehab." —Steve-O. [Page Six]
• Brad Pitt has dropped his publicist, Cindy Guagenti, who has repped him since Thelma & Louise. Could it be the influence of Angelina, who has never used a publicist? [Page Six]
• Brad Pitt (with local Springfield, MO businessmen and his brother Doug) has established a new fund to help Springfield public school students who are in poverty: The fund will address hunger, hygiene, and health needs. [KSMU]
• Will Lindsay Lohan's new album get released on time later this year? She's reportedly not being cooperative and canceled important meetings with producer Timbaland. Girl, check yourself before you wreck yourself. [Gatecrasher]
• Katie Couric plagiarized a poem when she was in grammar school and has kept it a secret for 45 years. What other skeletons does she have in her closet? [Gatecrasher]
• Yeah, yeah, Laguna Beach alum Jason Wahler is getting his own VH1 reality show, we know. And we're not looking forward to it. [Gatecrasher]
• Is Brody Jenner involved in that show? Or getting his own? [People]
• Blind item! "Which TV starlet could be the next to have embarrassing naked pix revealed? The racy snaps are a souvenir from her on-again, off-again hookups with a co-star." [Gatecrasher]
• Teri Hatcher will sing on American Idol Gives Back. Consider yourself warned. [Rush & Molloy]
• Kirsten Dunst is redoing the $3 million penthouse in Tribeca, NYC, she bought to live in now hat she's completed six weeks of rehab. Nothing gets booze off your mind like a pricey renovation project! [Rush & Molloy]
• Did UCLA Medical Center employees spy on Farrah Fawcett's files like they did on Britney's? [TMZ]
• Heather Mills was spotted at the airport wearing a black wig as a disguise. WTF. [The Sun]
• The Lord Chief Justice has said people who represent themselves in court — like Heather Mills — just waste the court's time. [Telegraph]
• The mayor of the town in Chile where Daniel Craig is shooting the new Bond movie is leading a protest against the film. The mayor claims that when he drove his car onto the set, Daniel Craig "fled in terror." Bond would never flee! [Daily Mail]
• Kanye West's new travel site is just a "shoddily assembled web 0.5 front-end to house the Travelocity website." [AdAge]
• Elvis Costello hosting a talk show for Sundance Channel? Sounds good. [Reuters]
• Stop me if you think you've heard this one before: Morrissey has won an apology in court from the publishers of Word Magazine, which called him a racist and a hypocrite. [Reuters]
• A judge has dismissed a defamation lawsuit by a businessman chased down the street by Sacha Baron Cohen in the Borat movie. Go away! [USA Today]
• Francis Ford Coppola's new movie is getting a "sex change": Carmen Maura is replacing Javier Bardem in the role of mentor and teacher. [Yahoo News]
• The family of R&B singer Sean Levert wants the FBI too look into his death — he died Sunday night after being strapped into a restraint chair in jail. [Yahoo News]
• Steve Irwin's father has quit working at the Australia Zoo because he was becoming a "disrupting influence." [Sydney Morning Herald]
• See, there's this pesky tax investigation going on involving the Irwins and the Zoo. [News.com.au]
• The Irwins and the Zoo got scammed. [News.com.au]
• "I think legal prostitution is the way to go, given the awful, horrendous traffic in women and the danger of girls being out on the street, so vulnerable to pimps and johns. In a legal brothel, they're licensed, they're protected, and the johns are protected because they know the girls have to be medically checked every week" - Helen Mirren. [Page Six]

[Hollywood, November 21. Image via x17]

[Hollywood, September 5. Image via x17]

Anyway, today we finally came across an article about an emerging Estonian industry we weren't completely bored to tears by: The Borat-themed, homoerotically-charged bachelor party industry beloved by men like Briton Adam Burrows.

By evening, Mr. Burrows was back on the town in a shiny, skin-tight red T-shirt and matching shorts, the get-up worn by an openly homosexual character in the British TV comedy "Little Britain." In the old town square, he and his pals ran into another group led by a groom-to-be in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle outfit. He and Mr. Burrows engaged in mock combat, wrestling one another to the ground.

In Estonia, "if we drink, we don't make so much noise," notes Tallinn's deputy mayor, Jaanus Mutli.

Yeah, Estonians probably wouldn't think to bake their own jizz into their best friends' bachelor party cakes, either. But just wait for another decade or so of steady GDP growth!

British Bridegrooms Bring Stage Revelry To Eastern Europe [Wall Street Journal]

Jennifer Aniston suffers the final indignity. Bad hair.

Faye Dunaway is morphing into Joan Rivers.

Isla Fisher is marrying this man. Lucky cow.