Hi, I'm Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic, and I'm here with the Slate Spoiler Special podcast on Bruno, the new Sasha Baron Cohen comedy.

With me from Washington, D.C. Slate Studios is Dan Koyce. Hi, Dan.

Hey, Dana.

Care to identify yourself?

I'm a film critic for The Washington Post and a contributing writer to New York Magazine. And you also, I will tell you in secret, or it's not secret anymore, I guess, are my

favorite person to spoil movies with.

So I'm really glad to be doing Bruno with you.

But we didn't see it together.

So I really have no idea what you thought of the movie.

Do you want to give me your first reaction?

Then we'll launch into some spoiling?

I laughed really hard all the way through and at the same time thought it was not exactly the

movie I expected it to be.

How so?

Because you also told me that you thought it was a lot like, like Borat.

Did you expect it to sort of deviate from that model more?

I think based on everything I had read and heard and maybe hoped, you know, based on all that, I'd sort of thought maybe it would actually be a brilliant

broadside against homophobia when, in fact, it's not really, it's just more an extremely

funny comedy starring a buffoon who this time happens to be gay.

I want to get to the homophobia, homophobia question later on, because I know you think it

somewhat falls down as a critique of homophobia, whether or not the movie itself could sort of, you know, be an unintentional incitement to homophobia is another question, but let's go over.

It's terrified of one particular.

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