Um, probably because Judd Apatow is like the god of all comedy of all time. He's basically had a hand in every other major comedy hit in the past five years, people lurve his short-lived (don't they have to be short-lived to have even more mythic status?) TV series Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared, and his two writer-director efforts at the cinema, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, have been critical and box office darlings. So you will have a hard time saying no to that.

But might you have an even harder time saying no to him when the back six of his latest auteur effort, a mopey Adam Sandler flick about the comedy of the heart, features, front and center, his acidic cherub of a wife, Leslie Mann? The early reviews, while mostly positive, do seem to find nagging flaw in the long last third of his movie, which deals with Mann's character and her marital strife.

We have nothing to base this on except pure speculation, but could it be that Apatow's dive into the serious side of his actress wife prickled a bit with Universal execs? Not that they wouldn't love Mann! Everyone loves Mann! But they love her as the spritely, mean supporting lady, not as the star of her very own late-summer dramatic arc. Plus can't poor Universal please just have a regular bros-'n'-dick-jokes August comedy to rely on, not some itchy junior Importance film ("The third film from...") by comedy's reigning rabbi?

No, they can't. Because Judd said so. It's his wife's big moment! Now that he's a big deal, it's gonna be one for you, one for him, etc forever. Next one's yours, Universal. No worries.

We think? Er, it's always possible that Universal just wanted some of the funny stand-up parts cut, right?

Both characters were from Baron Cohen's wildly funny Da Ali G Show, so either could have been made into a movie at any time. But we're just not sure that Brüno would be feasible as a market-ready comedy character had Borat not come and paved the pseudo-real, envelope-pushing path for him. Borat is awful—a misogynistic, racist, antisemitic boor—but, sadly, he's more palatable to a broad American audience than a gay Austrian fashion maven who exists solely to point out one of the country's most dearly-held prejudices: that most gays are just silly mockeries of themselves.

Borat certainly made fun of American xenophobia and jingoism, but those are things that people can't recognize in themselves as easily as a tetchy, and heartily defended, aversion to the gays. Borat was loud and political, whereas Brüno is an out, loud, and proud creation of a more immediate social hysteria, of an issue that's been at the forefront of the American culture wars these past few years. He teases at something far more tangible and taboo and unsettling to the popcorn-scarfing masses than Borat's buckshot blast at Stupid Americans that certainly aren't us. So had oh fashion friend come first... Well, Borat might not have been possible. Because Brüno is unlikely to catch the popular wave as easily, it's already been deemed a bit too dangerous and too outsider (plus aren't we all so sick of it already? We saw this one coming a mile away). And though Borat had its fights with the demands of decency (male nudity!), Brüno is all about those strictures.

And nobody likes to be taught a lesson, especially about themselves.

Though he'd previously done his shtick for Conan O'Brien and arrived at the show as Bruno, Cohen trotted out to the couches as himself. Maybe the story he told—about meeting a real-life terrorist while preening as the outrageously gay Austrian fashion reporter Bruno—was just too good and could only be told in person. It's also possible that after years of his masked shtick, the real Baron Cohen wants some notice for being himself.

Or maybe the character is just a bit too outrageous? Not that Dave Letterman would mind either way, obviously, but it is possible that he's been asked by ominous Powers That Be to scale back the hard sell. Borat was a funny guy because he was a weird foreigner Muslim. Bruno is funny because he's a weird foreigner but he's also, you know, gay and that's just so tetchy these days, best to leave it alone.

Ah well. No matter what, it's a great story.