WASHINGTON -- "Bruno," Sacha Baron Cohen's new shock-and-awe movie, is being accused of fanning prejudices about homosexuality, defaming Austria, using false representation to entice unsuspecting people to the camera, and staging situations. Those are the wrong charges -- and probably music to the ears of Cohen and Universal Studios.

Bruno is a self-obsessed, extravagant gay fashion reporter from Austria who comes to America in search of fame. His antics run up against obtuse attitudes toward homosexuality, celebrity and political correctness, often putting his life in danger.

America's Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation maintains that parts of the film "reinforce some damaging, hurtful stereotypes" and that the movie as a whole decreases "the public's comfort with gay people." No, it does the opposite. And I don't just mean the sketches that expose Southern homophobes such as the minister who counsels Bruno on becoming straight, the martial arts teacher who trains him to protect himself from harassment by gays, or the hunter who threatens him when he discovers his orientation. The scenes in which Bruno makes a caricature of his own homosexuality -- the grotesque sexual acrobatics with his lover or the attempt to seduce a heterosexual who is having sex with a partner at a swingers party -- are mocking enactments of the gay stereotype. "Bruno" savages the tribal instincts, the ignorance and the fears that lie at the root of intolerance.

Austria's government has called for a boycott of the film, with its ambassador to Britain calling it "completely improper and unsuitable" -- a pretty accurate description of what Cohen does for a living. But the faux Austrian protagonist (he claims to be the "biggest Austrian superstar since Hitler") does not defame any country. His provocative outbursts rather mock collectivist notions of nationhood, assuming most viewers are not stupid enough to believe every Austrian is a Bruno.

Does the film trick ordinary citizens into situations that expose their unpleasant character traits? To an extent, yes. But the things people say on camera are so self-incriminating that such trickery is almost beside the point. When a mother desperate to be interviewed for what she thinks is a real TV show agrees to have her child go through liposuction -- Bruno's condition for her participation -- any excuse is pretty feeble. Ditto for the celebrity who thinks she is going to be interviewed for a German TV program and, when asked to sit on the back of a Mexican gardener posing as a chair, does just that. The young PR consultant who suggests to Bruno that he wear an endangered-animal bracelet as a way to burnish his image is a perfect example of the bien-pensant political correctness that pervades the world of celebrities.

The real criticism to be leveled at "Bruno" is that half the sketches are hilarious and the other half stale. Humor works best -- and this is what made Cohen's previous movie, "Borat," supremely effective -- when it meets three conditions: exposure through comedic exaggeration of something that might be true, surprise and risk. As Bruno traipses across America, he takes brutal risks, which meets the third condition. Occasionally, he does the unexpected but, given the similarities with "Borat," he is often predictable. And although he does ridicule, through Manichaean exaggeration, the cultural rigidities of certain kinds of Southerners, the discomfort of many African-Americans with homosexuality, the obscurantism of some Hasidic Jews and the fanaticism of some Islamic activists, many of the scenes lack this crucial element of humor. Which is why, for instance, the scene in which Bruno hits on Rep. Ron Paul, who reacts in the way any person faced with such harassment would react whatever their sexuality, is pretty lame. And some sketches come across as simply vulgar for the sake of vulgarity.

The late 19th-century Decadents, a loose artistic movement, took up the phrase "epater le bourgeois" ("shock the middle classes") as a badge of pride to depict their work, mostly a reaction against Romanticism. That is how old and traditional Cohen's delight in shocking respectable society is. But it is a tradition that renews itself from time to time because recurring forms of conformity in society cry for new attempts to shake things up through social criticism of the outrageous kind. There is indeed something decadent about what Cohen does, and when it works less well than it did in "Borat" it can be annoying. But, still, the world is better off with this kind of anarchic spirit disturbing its complacent sense of what is respectable from time to time.