Movie Reveiws
�Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan� is funny. I�ll give it that. It carries itself by being relentless. Barely a minute goes by without its star, Sacha Baron Cohen, attempting some kind of repulsive, tasteless encounter with feminists, homosexuals, congressmen, zoologists, frat boys, anchormen, Pentecostals, or prostitutes.
So in reading that last sentence, I urge you to think before believing the hype, and listen closely before seeing the film.
It�s a mockumentary, kind of like �This is Spinal Tap� or �Best in Show,� and it begins with Borat (Baron Cohen) introducing us to his glorious nation Kazakhstan. He shows us around his village and takes us to some highly anticipated events, such as the Running of the Jew. (It�s almost like it sounds.) All of this is part of the norm, he tells us, but the nation has its low points, and so he is sent to America to gather modern cultural information to help �make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan.�
There are too many instances in the movie to list and I wouldn�t list most of them anyway; some of them I�d like to forget. But the film is making a point about America, so I will share a handful.
At one point, Borat is invited to sing the national anthem at a rodeo. Before doing so (and he butchers it, by the way), he has a conversation with a southern man who spouts a lot of terrible racial, hateful slurs about different groups of people in America. Later, Borat attends an etiquette-learning dinner with some upper class folks, where he takes advice too literally and ends up inviting a prostitute to the house. The guests become outraged and kick Borat and the prostitute out. Eventually, Borat accidentally attends a Pentecostal church and gets saved, but before that happens, the scene is dominated by shots of people dancing wildly and speaking in tongues, etc.
And before we know it, America looks like a latrine. Which is exactly the point being made. Cohen and the filmmakers use the examples of a few to represent the many.
It�s not like we didn�t know a lot of this already. It�s not like we haven�t been constantly fighting racism or foreign hate for centuries. Other countries experience the same things, but show me how many of those same countries condemn it.
On a comedic side, �Borat� succeeds. A lot. But, again, ignore the hype. It�s not the funniest movie ever. �Clerks II,� for example, is funnier. And at the same time, we�re relying on the filmmakers to sell each encounter to us. Most of the movie consists of real people reacting genuinely, but when it�s not, you can sense the staging.
But �Borat� also, interestingly enough, makes us ask ourselves what is funny, and what is just vulgar? Can the two coexist? It seems they can, which says something about movies like this. ** �