Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
For a while there you couldn’t turn on your television or open a magazine without coming face to face with Borat Sagdiyev. It took me a full week to wrap my brain around the picture of him bent over with his arm around Mickey Rooney in my Sunday paper. Not since Bill O’Reilly have I seen America so willingly ignore that someone was playing a character. This creation that Sacha Baron Cohen kind of stumbled into is like some love child of Sarah Silverman and Yakov Smirnoff, and it may very well be genius.
Borat has been sent to the United States by the government of Kazakhstan to learn all he can in hopes of making his home country a better place. While here he takes in as may cultural experiences as he possibly can. Of course, the differences in our two countries means that things aren’t going to go all that well for anyone involved. Even worse, after seeing an episode of Baywatch Borat, unbeknownst to his crew, decides to track down Pamela Anderson in hopes of making her his wife.
As a character I love Borat. Personally, I don’t think Cohen realized what he was getting when he made up his bumbling foreign correspondent. He’s like a Peter Sellers character that’s gone full tilt. What makes him great is that since people think he’s some backwards foreigner that doesn’t understand anything, they’re pulling one over on him. Meanwhile, due to the fact the most Americans know nothing about Kazakhstan or what the people look or sound like, Cohen is able to use their own ignorance against them and pull out some unbelievable behavior that they normally would have kept hidden. You would hope.
When the subjects are basically lured into saying or doing things that they generally keep private or just do around people like themselves is where the film is at its best. However, a good portion of the scripted bits that are in there just to give this film a semblance of plot don’t really work. There’s also a little too much guerilla style comedy for my taste. I realize given the nature of what Borat does that sounds a little ridiculous, but what I’m referring to are things such as him carrying a bag of poop into a dinner party and falling down and breaking merchandise in an antique shop. A couple of these types of things are a little too Tom Green-y for me and at least one I’ve actually seen him do.
This is a movie where some pretty rough things are said, but they are meant to have a pretty heavy air of irony attached to them. Granted, I wouldn’t go see it right after Sunday school, but good a portion of this film is meant to be offensive for a point. I think that was lost on the couple who sat in front of me scowling arms folded for its entirety. There are a lot of laughs, but they come in bursts and don’t build on each other. This could really hurt this film on repeated viewing, but the first time you see it there’s a good chance you’ll laugh so hard you cry and you just may pee your pants.
The Grade
- Story: B
- Acting: B+
- Visuals: B
- Originality: A
- Enjoyability: A
- Overall: B+
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