Please note that the end credits of “Borat” clearly state, “Nothing in this film is intended to convey the actual beliefs, practices or behavior of anyone associated with Kazakhstan.”
Duly noted.
The film’s full title is “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” and it is the brainchild of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. It is also, minute for minute, one of the funniest things unleashed in movie theaters since the new millennium began, and maybe the millennium before that.
The film purports to be a documentary about a journalist from Kazakhstan named Borat Sagdiyev (played by Baron Cohen) who comes to the U.S. as a kind of cultural ambassador. As he travels across country in hopes of meeting that paragon of all-American womanhood, Pamela Anderson, he leaves behind a trail of outraged and horrified bystanders.
But that’s the plot, not the movie. The actual production of this film had Sacha Baron Cohen, in character, thrown into a series of unscripted encounters with real people. His improvisations, and their reactions (first polite, then increasingly appalled) are strung together to create the film.
You must understand that Borat is misogynistic, anti-Semitic and xenophobic (reserving his greatest hostility for neighboring Uzbekistan). When he interviews a trio of feminists (“Listen, baby, smile a bit”), tries to buy a firearm to “protect myself from Jews,” or discusses a specific sexual practice with conservative politico Alan Keyes, he can be relied on to say the wrong thing. The amazing thing is, so can everybody else.
It’s hard to single out the single most glorious sequence in the film. Borat inviting a prostitute to be his date at an upper-class dinner party in the South comes close, as does his idiotic visit to a TV morning talk show. Still, his appearance singing the National Anthem at a Virginia rodeo, preceded by his cheerful introductory remarks approving of the “War of Terror,” should render most viewers alternately helpless with laughter and concerned for his personal safety.
Rated: R rating for language, nudity, subject matter
Now showing: Alderwood Mall, Everett, Metro, Pacific Place
Laugh till you cry: British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen embodies a misogynistic, anti-Semitic visitor from Kazakhstan named Borat, who tours the U.S. In a series of shaggy but hilarious improvised scenes, Borat descends upon unsuspecting dupes and horrifies them. The result is one of the funniest movies of this or any other millennium.
“Borat” is admittedly a shaggy film, its individual scenes patched together by director Larry Charles. I could’ve lived without the long sequence of Borat wrestling nude with his obese producer (also, alas, nude), and a few of the scenes cross into the uncomfortable zone of shooting easy targets.
But Sacha Baron Cohen, who co-starred in “Talladega Nights,” is on to something brilliant. For instance, Borat’s unbridled anti-Semitism draws out the casual anti-Semitism of the average Joe, and it seems the average Joe has plenty to go around. There is a satiric mind operating with a scalpel here.
“Borat” is so gleefully funny, you wouldn’t think it would be hard for audiences to “get.” (Well, the government of Kazakhstan isn’t happy about it, and some of the film’s unsuspecting dupes aren’t pleased either.) But Twentieth Century Fox has lost faith in Borat’s ability to speak the universal language of idiocy, cutting the number of theaters in which the film is opening. That’s a shame, because this kind of explosive satire should have audiences weeping with laughter.
Sacha Baron Cohen stars in “Borat.”
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