Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles follow up their comedy hit with this equally offensive concoction that proves amusing for a little while before running out of comedic steam well before its (thankfully brief) 82 minutes are up.

The Brit plays a gay Austrian fashionista who, after suffering professional humiliation in his native country, travels to America to try and become a celebrity.

It’s basically Borat with a different accent and sexual orientation and a little more pizzazz, and it employs that film’s same interviews-with-people structure. A few actual celebrities and a politician even appear as themselves as Cohen attempts to make himself famous. He tries forming a charity, getting some Middle Easterners to kidnap him, and, in a last ditch effort, going straight.

And also like that film, the funniest bits are of the non-repulsive variety. Like the Velcro suit Cohen ill-advisedly wears to a fashion show, the way he uses Mexican workers as chairs and refers to the Middle East as “Middle Earth,” and when he adopts an African baby and names it O.J. Not to mention his proposed celebrity show being labeled as “worse than cancer” by a focus group.

Of some actual interest here is watching what I assume to be real people react to the character’s homosexuality. There’s drill sergeant disbelief of Cohen’s designer military duds, utter silence from a group of southern hunters, and the terse words of hotel staff who find Cohen and his assistant/lover chained up in S&M gear. And let’s not forget the pastor charged with helping Cohen convert.

Unfortunately, the more distasteful elements–including making fun of a baby in a sonogram, Cohen trying to make a sex tape with said real politician, and a swinger’s party–all but destroys any glimmer of funny goodwill the film manages to foster. As a whole it’s both disgusting and even a little boring. Check out Cohen’s turn in Talladega Nights if you want to see how funny the man can really be. – [DVD]

Comedy

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 11/17/09

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