After the spectacular success of Borat, it was only a matter of time before Sacha Baron Cohen’s third flagship character made it to the big screen (the other, Ali G, namesake of Da Ali G Show where all three originated, was the “star” of 2002’s poorly received Ali G Indahouse, which I don’t even think had a theatrical release over here). Being quite familiar with Baron Cohen’s stuff, I was prepared for Brüno’s reality-fiction blurring, the comedian’s trademark roping of innocent bystanders into his characters’ aggressive, transgressive alternate realities.

What I wasn’t prepared for is how much this one sucked. Brüno just isn’t very funny. I used to think that the Brüno character was, at times, funnier than anything else on Da Ali G Show, but everything hilarious about him seems to have been reduced to the preposterous Euro-trash gay stereotype alone. What’s missing here is—not kidding—the subtlety. On the show, you could actually believe (and his clueless interview subjects obviously did) that Brüno was actually an idiot Austrian TV show host, and when his fashion world victims unwittingly played along, it was funny because it wasn’t that much of a stretch. Plopping him down in the U.S. with a boring, fictionalized storyline and focusing on outrageous costumes and stunts seems to miss what made him so hilarious in the first place. The Jackass movies still remain the gold standard for homoerotic reality-based prank comedies.

I grew up pretty much a huge Star Trek nerd, though it was The Next Generation that defined my adolescence. God, that show was awesome—in the era before long-arc TV storytelling, it managed to pack in so many great ideas in each episode. Volume two of The Best of Star Trek: The Next Generation features four great ones: “The Inner Light,” where a flute-playing Jean-Luc Picard lives out an alternate life on a doomed planet, is one of the series’ best.