So Sacha Baron Cohen‘s take on “Zoolander” didn’t set the world on fire. “Bruno” isn’t exactly a flop but it was set up for a much more fabulous box-office take than it earned last weekend. At this rate, it looks like it’s going to fall pretty well short of $100 million at the box office, far below “Borat” numbers. Recriminations time! Could it be that the film was too gay? Or too homophobic? Let’s consider.

Too gay: I doubt it. The movie was pretty much pitched entirely at the under-30 crowd. I can’t believe anything to do with homosexuality would be considered shocking or distasteful by this demo. To them, “gay porno” has been more or less a source of mirth, not dark whispers or uneasiness, for at least a decade. Even the middle-aged, middle-America focus group that is forced to watch Bruno’s fake bid for a TV variety show doesn’t seem shocked into hysteria but instead just angry that they were duped and forced to waste their time.

Too homophobic? I don’t really see this either. Bruno’s shtick is essentially to act so flamboyantly gay that the squares will be left spluttering at him, but I don’t find this aspect of the film is likely to bother gay viewers. For years one aspect of gay culture has been: Flaunt who you are, honey, and let the haters hate. The one scene in the movie that really could have been devised by homophobes is, I think, the one in which Bruno and his boyfriend use a variety of increasingly bizarre and painful-looking sex toys on each other. But the average gay viewer might well see this scene, also, as one that essentially mocks gay-haters. It’s a sort of meta-joke. Cohen is saying: Look, here’s the outrageously tasteless and horrible stuff that homophobes think gays do to one another behind closed doors. Let’s mock them by acting out their worst nightmares. So what are we left with as the reason “Bruno” is a disappointment? Only the obvious. That Cohen’s act is wearing thin and his sketch-comedy stuff is actually only sporadically funny. I think he’d be better off giving up his R-rated “Candid Camera” routine and simply being a chamelon-like comic supporting actor as he was (brilliantly) in “Talladega Nights.” I suspect he’s getting tired of trying to fool people, too. He’s not an underground comic anymore; he’s a rich celebrity. Why should he spend 50 hours of hard work, in character, on a camping trip in hopes of getting five minutes of usable material?