Borat:
Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation
of Kazakhstan (****)
review by Jon
Waterman
Borat, a television personality in Kazakhstan, is asked by
their government to travel to the United States. His purpose
is to study, and document on film, what makes America so great.
Borat fully intends to carry out his assignment, until he sees
an episode of Baywatch in his hotel room. He instantly falls
in love with CJ (aka Pamela Anderson) and makes it his new
mission to travel to California in order to seek her out and
make her his bride.
Half narrative. There’s no hiding the fact that most
of this stuff is made up. As much as Sacha Baron Cohen would
like to make us all believe that Borat is a real person by
conducting tons of promotional interviews as the character
he made famous on his brutally hysterical series “Da
Ali G Show,” the situations and camera coverage is simply
a little too polished to be anything but fake. The good news
is that doesn’t matter one bit. Luckily the team of accomplished
British comedy writers (Cohen, Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham
and Dan Mazer) does a great job of taking a 90% improvisational
entity and giving him a fun and interesting narrative thread.
Borat’s been given an accomplice in Azamat (played by
Ken Davitian), and the back and forth between the two lends
what is probably a much needed helping hand in keeping things
going in between the interview segments.
Half documentary. Even though Borat is fake and he has something
of an idea as to which bus he’s going to throw his subjects
under, I certainly still consider the interviews documentary.
The participants are left completely out of the joke and as
such make for a series of amazingly funny social experiments.
Half the humor comes from the incredibly awkward questions
that Borat asks, and the other half comes from the equally
awkward, sometimes surprisingly open responses the unwilling
respondents give. He’s somehow able to bring out the…in
people. Here I could say “the worst” because Cohen
manages to loosen people up to the point where they openly
make racist, sexist and other forms of bigoted comments. It’s
sad to think that our country is so naïve and stupid,
but unfortunately not too shocking. I could also say “the
best” because all that open hate, mixed in with pure
confusion and dumbfounded-ness is what makes the movie so enjoyable
and funny.
All hilarious. There’s no doubt this is the funniest
movie of the year. With two parts brilliant social satire and
one part crude gross out moments, this film is the perfect
blend of pure comedic pleasure. It’s astounding to see
how quickly Cohen thinks and responds to his interviewees with
outright hilarious questions and comments without ever breaking
character. It’s equally amazing that they never seem
to catch on. It would have been pretty easy for this film to
have turned out poorly. But the funny, smart storyline thread
that holds the “reality” parts together make the
movie a great success. The only downside is that there is little
to no possibility for a sequel, because the chicken is out
of the bag now.
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