I haven’t yet seen Bruno, the new film from Sacha Baron Cohen, but I can point you to John Nolte’s superbly informative and analytical critique at Big Hollywood. Nolte praises the film for consistently mocking contemporary liberal elites and political correctness, but laments its unceasing excessive obscenity and nudity, which he says becomes tiring very quickly:

With “Bruno,” and to his eternal credit, the Jester has turned on his masters and as we’ve seen in all those “Does ‘Bruno’ go too far?” articles, not surprisingly, many of them find turnabout unfair play. Because it’s now celebrity culture and other protected classes (gays and blacks) also facing Baron Cohen’s withering fire, suddenly what was once so daring, illuminating, brave and hilarious – guffaws at the expense of others – must now be met with beard scratching over “false gayness” and heavy, solemn pauses due to a “nasty streak.”

If you define politically incorrect as I do – having the guts to satirize the Left’s sacred cows (or everything Stewart, Letterman and Maher don’t do) – ”Bruno” hits the mark with an across the board ambush which, because everyone’s taking fire, goes a long way to mitigate the mean-spiritedness that made “Borat” such an exercise in elitist cruelty. The downside, and it’s a steep one, is that “Bruno” is relentlessly smutty and lewd, packed with full-frontal male nudity (much of it in close-up), outrageous but explicit portrayals of gay sex, and most disturbing, a swingers’ orgy with only the smallest of black dots to avoid an X-rating. This is easily the most off-putting film in years. . . .

Over time the relentless nudity and crudity starts to wear. Even though you’re laughing, at the same time you’re hoping the next scene gives it a rest. But as the film rolls on things only get worse until – even though you’re still laughing – you can’t wait for it to come to an end.

As Nolte describes it, Bruno appears to be one of those cultural products that send morally positive or anti-elite messages through astonishingly unpleasant and obscene surface content. That’s a common approach these days, and enables culture-makers to reach jaded audiences with salubrious truths.

We’ll know things are really getting better when those truths can regularly be told openly and without irony or a cloak of obscenity needed to sneak them past the vigilant political correctness police.

–S. T. Karnick