BoratSometimes it takes more than a few risque jokes to wash away the niceties of social decorum. Sometimes you need a full-blown acid bath of offensiveness to break down the wall of political correctness to get the audience to burst into tears of uncomfortable laughter. Borat--the full title being Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan--is a "mockumentary" about an uncouth reporter named Borat Sagdiyev (Sacha Baron Cohen), who is tasked to go to the United States and bring home to his third world nation of Kazakhstan what he learns for enrichment. Awkward hilarity ensues.
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The character of Borat is one of many developed by the chameleon-like performance comedian, Sacha Baron Cohen, and first appeared as a regular on his television show, "Da Ali G Show". As with Borat, the other characters from that show--all very different and played by Sacha Baron Cohen--would also be adapted into feature films--namely Ali G Indahouse and Brüno--but Borat has been the most successful. It's likely that part of this had to do with how it seemed to court controversy at its release, decried as offensive in every possible way--including antisemitic, sexist, obscene, disgusting, homophobic, and anti-American, and probably more. The great irony here is that while the character of Borat is the embodiment of vile traits, the film is arguably not. Borat is depicted as a wildly exaggerated stereotype of an ill-bred foreigner from a small village in Kazakhstan, with a deplorable social structure. His outlandish persona of a foreigner from one of the former Soviet nations, fumbling with his English, recalls 1980s comic, Yakov Smirnoff. Yet for all the absurd and perverse traditions in his village, he comes to America with a bright smile and positive attitude. In essence, Borat represents the optimistic immigrant looking to expand his understanding of the world--and through him, his homeland--by crossing the Atlantic (with a strange flight plan), and meeting his global neighbors. Borat's journey--originally supposed to be limited to New York City--takes him across the country to California after he becomes fixated on "Baywatch" star Pamela Anderson. Borat sees Pamela Anderson as a living Venus, and he deceives his producer and friend, Azamat Bagatov (Ken Davitian)--traveling with Borat--into accompanying him across the nation in a second-hand ice cream truck to see a more diverse cross-section of the United States for the documentary. As they journey along the coastline of the Eastern seabord and through Texas to the west coast, Borat and Azamat encounter people from different walks of life, and manage to offend almost all of them.
Borat plays off Baron Cohen's brand of performance comedy by appearing to interview and antagonize actual people (read: not actors) on the streets, in subways, in interviews, and so on. Borat is largely successful here, since the character of Borat is designed to provoke negative responses by preying on the social niceties and accepted boundaries, and even harassing strangers. This leads to some tense and daring encounters, like the heated and angry threats barked at Borat after his cringeworthy attempts to greet strangers in New York City. What makes these moments like these weirdly poignant is that it underscores not just the boorish Kazakhstan native's own malapropisms and poor judgment but hints at the social insecurities of Americans, with some of them mirroring Borat's attitudes toward certain ethnic groups, and other negative parallels. Borat remains a controversial film, because it appears to make fun of "America". Certainly, if Borat's interactions are to be believed, the many people he encounters are not presented in a flattering light, and superficially make Borat appear to be about exposing the hypocrisy and intolerance of the United States. This cataloging of people he annoys makes the America of Borat appear more like a "MAD Magazine" version of the nation, a caricature which is both elitist and artificially tolerant. Since Sacha Baron Cohen (as Borat) poses as a reporter, it's reasonable that Borat is accompanied by whoever is holding the camera in his adventure, but it also raises the specter that a significant chunk of the film is "staged". This does not diminish the humor of Borat, since it still creates a pastiche of misadventures that appear unscripted and raw. Many of the performances are so convincing, that even when you know that some participants must be in on the joke, it still feels like edgy--even dangerous--comedy, especially when Borat finally gets to meet the object of his desire, Pamela Anderson, who plays herself. Consider when Borat sings his Kazakhstan national anthem--to the tune of "The Star-Spangled Banner"--at a Texas rodeo, decked out in a shirt resembling the American flag. It is so big and becomes palpably tense by the raw audacity of it, that the audience is left feeling that the episode must have had a grain of truth to it. Like all comedy, Borat--and its brand of humor--is subjective. It is so outlandish, that it's clear that it's not for everyone--ironic considering that it deals so extensively with intolerance, and subtly (yes, subtly, if anything is subtle about Borat) asks the audience to reevaluate their own insecurities as they endure this counterpoint to the stereotypical "ugly American".
Recommended for: Fans of an outlandish and unquestionably offensive comedy about everything from stereotypes to national identity, posing as a documentary chronicling a journey across America. The convincing persona of Borat also makes Sacha Baron Cohen an inheritor of a comedy style similar to performers like Peter Sellers.
Borat plays off Baron Cohen's brand of performance comedy by appearing to interview and antagonize actual people (read: not actors) on the streets, in subways, in interviews, and so on. Borat is largely successful here, since the character of Borat is designed to provoke negative responses by preying on the social niceties and accepted boundaries, and even harassing strangers. This leads to some tense and daring encounters, like the heated and angry threats barked at Borat after his cringeworthy attempts to greet strangers in New York City. What makes these moments like these weirdly poignant is that it underscores not just the boorish Kazakhstan native's own malapropisms and poor judgment but hints at the social insecurities of Americans, with some of them mirroring Borat's attitudes toward certain ethnic groups, and other negative parallels. Borat remains a controversial film, because it appears to make fun of "America". Certainly, if Borat's interactions are to be believed, the many people he encounters are not presented in a flattering light, and superficially make Borat appear to be about exposing the hypocrisy and intolerance of the United States. This cataloging of people he annoys makes the America of Borat appear more like a "MAD Magazine" version of the nation, a caricature which is both elitist and artificially tolerant. Since Sacha Baron Cohen (as Borat) poses as a reporter, it's reasonable that Borat is accompanied by whoever is holding the camera in his adventure, but it also raises the specter that a significant chunk of the film is "staged". This does not diminish the humor of Borat, since it still creates a pastiche of misadventures that appear unscripted and raw. Many of the performances are so convincing, that even when you know that some participants must be in on the joke, it still feels like edgy--even dangerous--comedy, especially when Borat finally gets to meet the object of his desire, Pamela Anderson, who plays herself. Consider when Borat sings his Kazakhstan national anthem--to the tune of "The Star-Spangled Banner"--at a Texas rodeo, decked out in a shirt resembling the American flag. It is so big and becomes palpably tense by the raw audacity of it, that the audience is left feeling that the episode must have had a grain of truth to it. Like all comedy, Borat--and its brand of humor--is subjective. It is so outlandish, that it's clear that it's not for everyone--ironic considering that it deals so extensively with intolerance, and subtly (yes, subtly, if anything is subtle about Borat) asks the audience to reevaluate their own insecurities as they endure this counterpoint to the stereotypical "ugly American".
Recommended for: Fans of an outlandish and unquestionably offensive comedy about everything from stereotypes to national identity, posing as a documentary chronicling a journey across America. The convincing persona of Borat also makes Sacha Baron Cohen an inheritor of a comedy style similar to performers like Peter Sellers.