Greetings. Jak sie masz. My name Case Blackwell. I go to see movie film about British Jew posing as anti-Semitic Kazak reporter. I like. It very nice. I review.
Ok. Aside from my sorry attempts to write in the voice of Borat, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is the funniest movie I've seen this year. It's also one of the craziest, grossest and most offensive.
Those familiar with Da Ali G Show or the blitzkrieg of promotion that has preceded this film already know the basic premise backing Borat. The movie's set up as a totally real documentary about a Kazak reporter named Borat. He's sent to the U.S. in order to make "cultural leanings" that will aid his country in finding solutions to its biggest problems which are, as he says, "social, economic and Jew." Borat is racist, sexist, sex-crazed and cheerfully ignorant of all social graces -- but he's just the alter-ego of British improv comic Sacha Baron Cohen. Cohen never breaks character when interviewing (or hassling) the people he runs into, so none of Borat's victims have any idea that it's all a joke. It's kind of like candid camera without the "just kidding" moment.
The film's comedy comes from Borat's ability to make, in equal parts, an ass of both himself and everyone he meets. Yet Cohen's creation is so bizarrely friendly and unassuming that even when he's spouting off some of the most psychotically offensive statements imaginable he manages to remain endearing. This not only keeps the comedy from becoming too dark to be funny, it prevents Cohen's interviewees from immediately walking out. Sometimes -- and this is where things get more interesting -- Borat's style makes people so comfortable Cohen ends up bringing out others' completely real prejudices. Take his trip to a rodeo in good old Salem, Va. where an interview prompts a man to tell Borat he needs to shave his moustache because it makes him look like an Arab and a terrorist (for this guy, the two are synonymous). Later, Borat asks a gun shop owner which gun is best "for killing Jew," and the man responds, without hesitation, "A glock."
Not all the humor works off social parody. Sometimes Borat just goes for gross-out gags, as when Borat and his flabby, bear-like "producer" Azamat (played by Ken Davitian, one of the few people in the film who is also crafting a character and is in on the joke) get into a dispute. They happen to be naked. The episode ends in some truly disturbing wrestling and a mad chase, while still in the buff, through the hotel in which they are staying. Moments like this may not have the subversive appeal of some of the film's more politically and socially charged segments, but they are still pretty damn funny (at least in a hard-to-look-at kind of way).
I liked Borat's segments on Da Ali G Show, but Borat is consistently funnier then Cohen's showings there. I don't know if it's because the film had more material to work with or if Cohen simply upped his game, but the Borat's movie establishes a brisk comic pace the show never quite did and none of the gags fall flat. If you're of the politically correct sort you might want to steer your easily offended self away from this movie. But those with, well, a sense of humor, owe it to themselves to see Borat.
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