Between the no holds barred sex scenes and the redneck baiting, Bruno sets out to shock like the sun intends to rise in the morning. Check out that whopping 18 certificate.

Bruno (18)
** Dir: Larry Charles
With: Sacha Baron Cohen, Bono, Elton John

Between the no holds barred sex scenes and the redneck baiting, Bruno sets out to shock like the sun intends to rise in the morning. Check out that whopping 18 certificate.

But here's ze rub, as Sacha Baron Cohen's latest creation, the titular Austrian fashionista, might put it - is it funny? Only if there's a place on the amusing scale between food poisoning and home repossession.

There were, admittedly, a couple of moments where I smiled. Yet on the whole, Baron Cohen's latest journey into the dressing up box is a lazy exercise in smugness that ends with him standing shoulder to shoulder with the kind of celebrity he's meant to have spent most of the movie parodying.

Bruno (Baron Cohen) is the host of Funkyzeit, a fashion show on Austrian television. In one of the film's droller scenes, Bruno commits a fashion faux pas on a par with wearing polyester trews to an interview with US Vogue editor Anna Wintour, and finds himself cast out.

In a repeat of the Borat story, Bruno decides his future lies in America. Taking a trusty sidekick (another lift from Borat), he criss-crosses the US in a bid to make himself what he has always revered - a celebrity. "Ich was going to be the biggest Austrian superstar since Hitler."

Bruno/Baron Cohen will achieve his goal by interviewing various loons, staging stunts, and generally kicking up a tempest of controversy. Again, any resemblance to Borat is purely obvious.

Director Larry Charles, director of Borat and Religulous, had a five-strong writing team, including Baron Cohen, at his disposal. They, and the production crew, put in their best efforts early on, finding Bruno an agent and placing him as an extra in a TV courtroom drama where he proceeds to cause merry havoc.

Given how well Baron Cohen is known in LA it must have taken cloak and dagger work of the niftiest order to get him on the working set of a television show.

Similarly, when he lures Paula Abdul to an interview where the seating is of an, um, highly unusual kind, the film finds that perfect balance between audacious, witty, and telling. Kudos to him for that.

But when the film moves outside Tinseltown it loses its way, becomes hopelessly contrived, or is just plain unfunny - as when Bruno goes to the Middle East and tells a spokesman for a "martyrs' brigade" that he wants to become famous through being kidnapped. Stitch my sides, doctor.

Baron Cohen's comedy is of the strictly smash, grab the cheap laugh and run kind. He floors you with the ludicrousness of a situation, and his supposed bravery in entering into it. The outrageousness makes you gasp. Anxiety, for him, translates into a nervous laugh and hey ho it's on to the next scene. It's only when you watch his work again - Borat being a perfect example - you wonder what seemed so amusing the first time around. With Borat, he had the advantage of being fresh and fast. Bruno, in comparison, seems tired and obvious.

If the jibes at wannabe celebrities and dim models are the stuff of hitting a barn door with a rocket launcher, it's the redneck teasing that brutally exposes Baron Cohen's caper as well past its use by date.

Here is the news from Bruno: there are some gullible, prejudiced people in America, just like there are gullible, prejudiced people all over the world. But these are people so out of the loop they somehow missed the worldwide publicity surrounding Borat's japes. They're so gullible they rise to the bait like starving carp. Finding and exposing them is an achievement on a par with yawning.

As for the much vaunted cage fighting scene, it's not half as daring as the rodeo set piece in Borat. Somehow, it doesn't seem that brave to whip a crowd into a frenzy after they are legless on beer, and full security is safely in place.

At the end comes the prime example of Baron Cohen losing it as a satirist. Bruno, we see, has finally been given a pass into Celebrityville and is recording a charity single. Helping him out in the studio is none other than Elton John, Bono, Slash and Snoop Dogg.

Now there are two ways to look at this. Either this lot of A-listers and their vast entourages are strictly Z-list in knowing who Baron Cohen is. Unlikely. More likely, they are in on the act. So we have one rich celebrity, Baron Cohen, joining other rich celebrities - one of whom, Elton John, unsuccessfully sued a newspaper for having a gentle dig at one of his charity fundraisers - to supposedly lampoon rich celebrities.

Any satirist worthy of the job title should be aiming to hit the gold standard established by Chris Morris in Brass Eye. Baron Cohen merely has a brass neck, and even that is losing its lustre.