Should I take my new girlfriend to see Brüno?

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They are candid, provocative - and totally at odds with each other. Our resident 'sexperts' Nirpal Dhaliwal and Esther Walker offer conflicting advice on Londoners' sexual dilemmas...

NIRPAL SAYS

If you're trying to avoid having sex with your girlfriend, you can bank on a movie date with Brüno to ensure that you're off the hook for at least one night, possibly even a couple of weeks.

I can't imagine anyone getting laid after seeing this film.

At best, you will laugh yourself sick and your girlfriend will realise that you are in a state of subnormal development as you're both exposed to male toilet humour at its juvenile worst.

Or, you will both be bored and irritated at the incessant spectacle of willies, dildoes, homophobia and human stupidity that fills this movie and then go home feeling a little depressed. Either way, she won't want sex.

And if you do, you should think long and hard about what you really need in a partner — a penis, maybe?

This is the movie equivalent of over-excited boys dry-humping each other, the kind of tawdry jock humour that was funny for several minutes when you were 15 years old.

It's not the sort of movie that'll have you both staring into each other's eyes in intense and engaged conversation over a glass of red wine afterwards.

If you both like getting stoned, then wait until it's out on DVD and then you can have a night in, getting high and giggling like twits together as you plough through a tube of Pringles.

That's about the only value this film can have as entertainment for couples.

Your girlfriend might make an effort to enjoy it, forcing laughter in order to show you that she's a post-feminist geezer-bird who can have fun with the lads. In which case, you'll probably go right off her.

Women who make a point of sharing blokey jokes are about as sexy as women who like football — ie not at all.

Men know how retarded and pointless our humour and distractions are and we need women to elevate our condition, not pander to it.

But there is one invaluable reason for taking a girlfriend to see it. Men are generally useless at dumping women, stringing them along while lacking the courage to let them go.

Take her to see Brüno and laugh dementedly at the crassest moments and then talk endlessly about how it's the best film ever, while mimicking the character at every opportunity — that's a sure-fire way to make her decide to cut you loose for good.

ESTHER SAYS

You're right to think twice about whether to take your brand new girlfriend to see a film as controversial as Brüno.

It goes out of its way to make you squirm: Brüno staggers — leather-clad and chained to his gay lover — into an anti-gay demonstration; he tries to seduce Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul and he starts snogging a man while in the ring at a cage fight.

There's a horrifying 30-second close-up shot of a huge, waggling penis and explicit sex scenes — the crucial parts only barely covered up by black squares — at a swingers' party.

It's not that your girlfriend will be mortally offended, it's just that unless you like that omigod-I-can't-look style of satire, it's pretty stressful to watch Brüno miming extravagant oral sex in front of a medium and confusing "hummous" with "Hamas" at Israel/Palestine peace talks.

But the actual watching of the film isn't the issue — if she went to see it with friends she might well think it was a hoot — the point is how she will interpret your choice.

So just ask her if she wants to see it, right? Wrong! In new relationships, girls would rather die than appear prohibitive, demanding or a nag. Later she won't care but at the start she'll want to seem relaxed.

When you suggest Brüno, she won't say she'd rather eat wasps than see it, or that she thinks Sacha Baron Cohen is about as funny as cancer or that she walked out of Borat.

She will sweetly swear blind that Brüno is an excellent choice and that she can't wait to see it.

But as you buy your popcorn and settle down in your seats, I promise she will be thinking, "I can't believe he's making me see this stupid film!"

Then she'll start to wonder what you're "trying to say" to her by picking out this film for you both to watch.

Then she'll worry you're not compatible — and by the end of the film she'll have been practising her "Listen..." speech in her head for the last half an hour.

Later on down the line you can thrash out, honestly, the kind of films you can watch together but at the start, it's best to play it safe.

Save Brüno to see with your mates and take her to Public Enemies instead; it has guns and gangsters for you and Johnny Depp in a vest for her. Bliss.

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