How should you judge a comedy? If by how many laughs it triggers, then Sacha Baron Cohen's mock documentary about a gay fashionista attempting to become "the biggest Austrian superstar since Hitler" earns four pink stars. If the number of gasps it elicits and the sheer chutzpah of the comedian are figured in, Brüno warrants a fifth.

Incredulous gasps are emitted because Baron Cohen takes it to a new level of outrageousness. The British comic's follow-up to Borat is ruder, cruder and more likely to offend, particularly if one has an aversion to flamboyantly ignorant individuals obsessed with same-sex sex and prone to donning outlandish outfits. Steer clear if Borat wasn't your cup of tea. Although Brüno is a tighter flick that wickedly skewers homophobia and celebrity culture, ribald doesn't come close to describing what transpires. Putting his hairless self in harm's way, Baron Cohen sets the bar for guerilla comedy both as high and as low as it can go.

Like Borat, subtitled Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakstan, Brüno is directed by Larry Charles and concerns a fringe media figure -- vapid host of a television program about fashion called Funky Zeit -- who goes stateside to make a name for himself. The methodology is the same. Segments are filmed with people who (for the most part at least) think Brüno is for real and not one of Baron Cohen's personas from his TV series The Ali G Show. The movie's subtitle, which the studio (Üniversal) decided not to use on screen, summarizes the intended effect: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt.

His pigmy boyfriend having declined, Brüno's nebbishy assistant Lutz (Gustaf Hammarsten) volunteers to accompany him abroad. In the course of unnerving the unsuspecting, Brüno tries to bring peace to the Middle East, adopts an African child, has his nether region bleached, appears as an extra on an episode of NBC's Medium, interviews D-list celebrities in a furniture-less Hollywood manse, and endeavors to make a sex tape with a former Presidential candidate. These are just some of the mentionable episodes.

Eventually, Brüno decides to go straight. He visits Evangelical ministers who believe they can cure him of his sexual orientation and a martial arts expert who instructs him on how to defend himself from belligerent gays. He attends a hetero swinger's party, goes hunting with some good ol’ boys, signs up for the National Guard, and enters himself in a cage fight.

Primarily, it's amazing what Baron Cohen will do in the name of entertainment. It's even more mind-boggling what people (entertainment professionals and laypeople) will do in front of a camera or for the chance to appear on camera. The most painful example of the former is when Brüno and his adoptee, whom he christens O.J., appear on a talk show with a predominantly African-American in-studio audience. The sickest example of the latter occurs during a sequence in which Brüno interviews parents of babies he may cast in a new video alongside O.J. One woman agrees to get her child to lose ten pounds -- using liposuction if necessary!

Compared to Borat, there's greater meanness to this material. The targets are large, obvious, and vulnerable. But Baron Cohen is also more willing to make Brüno, pardon the awful pun, the butt of the joke. He's relatively less likeable than Borat because that serves the purpose of shining a harsh light on homophobia and the double standards and hypocrisies of our showbiz-centric culture. His willingness to humiliate himself using gay stereotypes on steroids -- and risk life and limb in the process -- is a means to a satirical end: trashing sacred cows.

While his goal is much more bald than in Borat (partly because we the audience are now onto him), Brüno is better satire because it's more focused and less sly. Because greater forethought appears to have been given to the project and a tighter form was achieved by Charles and the writers, including Baron Cohen, it cuts deeper and more explicitly into real issues. It's more explicit about poking fun at the people he's interacting with on screen and at the viewer's beliefs, prejudices and capacity for tolerance.

To all those whining about celebrity media coverage run amok (Michael Jackson's death being the latest and largest example), Brüno can serve as lubrication for their arguments and cavils. More important than being über satirical, Brüno is über funny. And if you start analyzing why or classifying the different types of laughs it instigates, both the pleasure and the purpose begin to evaporate.

(Released by Universal Pictures and rated "R" for pervasive strong crude sexual content, graphic nudity and language.)