Just in case there is anyone left who hasn’t got the gist of how Sacha Baron Cohen operates, to briefly summarise he creates morosely exaggerated caricatures that channel into a certain facet of society i.e. Ali G, the perceived vacuity of youth culture and Borat, an imperfect satire upon xenophobic ignorance.

Primarily using spoof interviews with unwitting subjects, he is half Louis Theroux, by which he uses his characters apparent naivety to disarm his subject and extract risibly appalling statements that play upon their prejudice or blind ignorance. And half Tom Green, where he performs a preposterous coup de grace on his stupefied prey with shockingly gross slapstick that is often more miss than hit, but always wince-inducing to watch.

In terms of the film’s style, Brüno closely follows that of Borat in having a fairly flimsy storyline that acts as a vehicle to take the character from one antagonistic interview to the next. In this case, the overtly gay Austrian Brüno, has set out to find fame and fortune in the USA following a fashion faux pas that led to his loss of status as the ‘leading German language fashion presenter, outside of Germany.’

Cohen’s portrayal of an extrovert Austrian fashionista is everything you would expect, there are PVC clad Thai gimp boys, drawers of gerbils, anal-bleaching, outlandish German accents and dildos galore along with clever catty comebacks like “you tried to make my face pregnant”. Obviously open to attack due to it’s unashamedly crude portrayal of homosexuality, it is worth noting that Brüno has the highest grossing opening weekend for any film featuring an openly gay lead character (beating Birdcage into second place), and since the jokes come at the expense of either how ridiculous the reaches to which he can push the stereotyping and the prejudice and paucity of awareness amongst those he interviews, such criticisms are unjust.

A fair criticism though, is that in once again focusing his aggravating band of characteristics on the 32% of Americans who prevent George W. Bush’s approval rating from ever dropping to zero, he isn’t so much shooting fish in a barrel as grenading them. However, watching the results of Brüno providing metaphorical money shots to those who consider ever fibre of his created being to be grossly indecent is rarely less than hilarious.

Highlights include a pushy mother agreeing that her toddler would drop 10lbs through liposuction, operate heavy machinery and pose dressed as Hitler pushing a Jewish baby in an oven to ensure she got her child a modelling contract, along with a vacuous charity PR company executive stating “which [animal] is like, really extinct right now?” While the DVD extras provides previously unseen footage of Brüno fronting at an anti-gay marriage march and several other interviews which must have been begrudgingly left on the cutting room floor.

Special features: deleted scenes, commentary from Sacha Baron Cohen and Larry Charles (which annoyingly didn’t work), interview with Cohen’s agent

Brüno is out now on DVD and Blu-ray via Universal Home Entertainment