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Having attended the preview screening of Brüno the other night, I can tell you that it's just as explicit and provocative as expected. But is it offensive? Depends on the viewer, I guess.

While I had to cover my eyes to avoid moments of extreme awkwardness, I took no real issue with the stunts Sacha Baron Cohen pulls in the film, most of them part of a subversive effort to open Americans' eyes about their own perceptions of homosexuality.

Like Cohen's Borat character did before, Brüno consistently takes things too far when talking to or spending time with the "unknowing" interviewees and bystanders in the movie. But unlike Borat, Brüno seems to know he's taking things too far, and doesn't care. "Ish just vant to be a star," he'd say.

He makes Paula Abdul sit on the back of a Mexican gardener for lack of chairs. He puts a "GAYBY" shirt on his adopted African child. He and his lover/assistant call for help from hotel staff when they get, uh, stuck together. He camps out with a group of backwoods hunters and makes passes at one of them in the middle of the night. And so on.

What a lot of folks are taking offense to, one would suppose, is the way Brüno represents gay people. He's got no sexual boundaries, and he sees everything and everyone as fashion accessories to be used and abused in his quest for superstardom. He's so two-dimensional, he might as well be a cartoon character. But really, does anyone believe that all gays are like Brüno? I give Americans more credit than that -- at least the ones who aren't in the film.

And there's an argument to be made as to whether some of the film's subjects were completely clueless about what was really going on. For instance, there's a scene in which Brüno goes to a military boot camp to try to make himself straight. The two officers barking orders at him are hilarious in their sternness and the way they respond to Brüno's sarcasm. But there's no way they thought this was anything but a comedic experiment. Brüno played his part; they played theirs.

Same goes for the folks at a swingers party Brüno attends. The dominatrix he encounters is so over the top that it feels for a moment he's met his match.

Speaking of the sex scenes (both depicted and mimed -- don't ask), they might cause you to make a noise somewhere between a guffaw and a groan. In one section of the film, Brüno's special area gets a close-up that will be forever burned in my brain.

This is a short and never-boring movie for those who aren't easily offended. I wouldn't say that it's as much of a masterpiece-of-awkwardness as Borat, but you shouldn't wait for the DVD. See it this weekend so you'll have something to talk to your co-workers about on Monday. And be sure to check out this week's cover story on all the controversy surrounding the film, including the claims by some Carrollton residents that Baron Cohen was way out of line at a fake-talk-show taping. Brüno opens tomorrow.