'Brüno'

Baron Cohen's talent is actually part of the problem. One of the questions dogging the film has been how it can top the pure invention and surprise of "Borat." The answer? Go worldwide, go celebrity, go more outrageous and, as often as possible, go naked. That will buy you giant waves of laughter, but hanging out fame's dirty laundry does not trump Kazakhstan's cultural education, if for no other reason than we've had front row seats to the celebrity mess for years.

Ultimately, we're left searching for those moments when the film succeeds in revealing something about ourselves and the times that we don't already know -- though I guess the stage mother who agreed to get her toddler liposuction might qualify.

Lenny Bruce famously said that "satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it." It explains why the words that bought Bruce obscenity trials in the '60s are many of the same ones that will no doubt soon be funding a lap pool or some other nicety in Baron Cohen's backyard.

But will a swinging, singing penis buy anything more than a pack of cigarettes and cough 40 years hence? I don't think so.

In "Bruno," Baron Cohen tries to serve up an interactive, down-market street version of the provocative intellectual freestyle that Bruce mastered in comedy clubs before they started banning him. Both comics succeed in eliciting laughter and discomfort in equal measure.

But it often seems with Baron Cohen that we're only getting the first half of the joke. Yes, people will look shocked in an airport terminal if your baggage turns out to be a black baby in a box. But maybe it's not only the boxed baby that's horrified them but also the film crew.

And does the outrage from a largely black audience to the O.J. baby on a Dallas talk show speak to their stupidity, as the film suggests, or is Baron Cohen being punked by a group that understands its role as part of this absurdist theater better than he does?

With Bruce there was always a biting moral to the story. With Larry, Curly and Moe, the message was delivered with a bruising bop on the head. "Bruno" is easy to dismiss as salacious comedy on the cheap, and at times that's what it feels like. But in a world where mercy is a celebrity adoption and the only pain an adulterous governor feels is his own ("Do Cry for Me Argentina"?), Baron Cohen's instincts for outrage are spot on. It's not insight we need at all right now, but a very sharp bonk on the head.

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betsy.sharkey@latimes.com

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'Bruno'

MPAA rating: R for pervasive strong and crude sexual content, graphic nudity and language

Running time: 1 hour, 23 minutes

Playing: In general release