Monday, March 19, 2007
DVD Review: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
"Look for the ridiculous in everything, and you will find it." So wrote Jules Renard, and it's as true a statement about the human condition as has ever been uttered by a French, atheist, socialist playwright. Unfortunately, the maxim followed by many of today's journalists, especially film critics, seems to be "Look for the extremely serious in everything, and manufacture it if you can't find it." That's the only way I can explain some of the preening pontifications produced by America's movie critics in response to Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. This movie is easily the most absurd, profane, irresponsible, flat-out-funny farce released by any major movie studio since my all time favorite comedy, Blazing Saddles. Everything about Borat is ridiculously funny, and yet a great many of the journalists who've reviewed it somehow saw this movie as important social commentary. That may be the movie's last running joke: it managed to get people who weren't even in the movie to make asses of themselves. More on that later.
It's only mid March, but I'm prepared to name Borat the DVD of the year. It had me laughing before I even got it into the DVD player. Once I slipped the DVD case out of the cardboard cover, I saw that the cover art is made to look like a bad bootleg, a copy of a copy of a copy. There isn't a word on the back of the case that's in English, and even the disc itself is funny; it looks like a burned DVD-R copy of the film, complete with the title written in black Sharpie marker, the "r" backward. The DVD-R brand name is Demorez. ("Is Life? No. Demorez.")
I slipped the DVD into our DVD player and found that the menus were funny, the anti-pirating warning from the government of Kazakhstan was funny, and the movie itself … forget about it.
Borat is a mockumentary about the adventures of the title character, a Kazakhstani TV journalist who's touring America. It's one of the most vulgar films I've ever seen, but it is soooo funny. It's doubled-over, tears-streaming, braying-laughter funny. In a decade overflowing with top-notch mockumentaries (Best In Show, Trailer Park Boys, The Office {UK}, The Office {US}), Borat is the funniest.
Now, this movie is not for everyone. I believe that Borat's R rating is another example of the MPAA's incompetence. This film should have been rated NC-17 due to the pervasive, graphic, profane content. This is not a family movie. I can't imagine watching this film with my family. I'd be mortified at the prospect of watching it with the Manson family, for Pete's sake. But get together a few thick-skinned adults and maybe a couple of beers and Borat is an hour and a half of hilarity. The laughs just never stop.
Borat is a character created and portrayed by British comedian and actor Sacha Baron Cohen, and he's one of only two or three people in the film who are in on the jokes. The humor comes from the nonchalance with which Borat says horribly racist, sexist, disgusting things to strangers who can only react with confusion, bewilderment, anger ... and sometimes with delight. After all, the rest of the people in the film… politicians, salesmen, frat boys, etc... aren't in on the joke. They think that Borat is a real person. Imagine a bizarro version of Candid Camera. Imagine Jackass or The Tom Green Show if they were actually funny. Better yet, imagine Andy Kaufman if he'd ever realized his potential.
And if Cohen is willing to make others look silly in his film, it's nothing compared to what he puts himself through. Cohen will do anything for a laugh. He makes Will Farrell look restrained. His own body is his best prop, and he literally strips himself of any possible pride during the course of this movie. One scene, involving a nude and public fistfight, is simultaneously hilarious, awkward, juvenile and appalling. Every detail of Cohen's anatomy is visible, except for that which is hidden by a black bar … and even the specifics of the black bar itself serves as yet another joke. I've no doubt that, had he had a better idea, Cohen would have forgone even that modesty.
Borat is uproariously funny … and after you've finished the film, watched all of the DVD extras, and you think you've laughed at everything associated with the movie, you can check the internet and read reviews that say things like this:
And on and on and on. It's really funny. Even after the movie has been released, Borat was still getting strangers to act like fools. These reviews, of course, say far more about the reviewer than they do about the film. After all, most movie critics are "urban sophisticates," and the only thing that matches their love for themselves is their hatred of middle America, where most of Borat takes place. Nonetheless, gay-pride paraders, New Yorkers and LA street people are prodded and parodied as well. Nobody is safe from Borat.
This movie isn't high-brow comedy. Hell, it isn't low-brow comedy. This is sub-brow comedy. I suppose that only a high-fallutin' film critic would feel the need to justify his or her enjoyment of a movie like this by convincing himself or herself that it's "culturally significant." Of course, Borat himself would probably find these reviews "very inform of politic and customs of society in US and A." As for Cohen, I'm sure he's laughing all the way to the bank. Andy would be proud.
"Look for the ridiculous in everything, and you will find it." So wrote Jules Renard, and it's as true a statement about the human condition as has ever been uttered by a French, atheist, socialist playwright. Unfortunately, the maxim followed by many of today's journalists, especially film critics, seems to be "Look for the extremely serious in everything, and manufacture it if you can't find it." That's the only way I can explain some of the preening pontifications produced by America's movie critics in response to Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. This movie is easily the most absurd, profane, irresponsible, flat-out-funny farce released by any major movie studio since my all time favorite comedy, Blazing Saddles. Everything about Borat is ridiculously funny, and yet a great many of the journalists who've reviewed it somehow saw this movie as important social commentary. That may be the movie's last running joke: it managed to get people who weren't even in the movie to make asses of themselves. More on that later.
It's only mid March, but I'm prepared to name Borat the DVD of the year. It had me laughing before I even got it into the DVD player. Once I slipped the DVD case out of the cardboard cover, I saw that the cover art is made to look like a bad bootleg, a copy of a copy of a copy. There isn't a word on the back of the case that's in English, and even the disc itself is funny; it looks like a burned DVD-R copy of the film, complete with the title written in black Sharpie marker, the "r" backward. The DVD-R brand name is Demorez. ("Is Life? No. Demorez.")
I slipped the DVD into our DVD player and found that the menus were funny, the anti-pirating warning from the government of Kazakhstan was funny, and the movie itself … forget about it.
Borat is a mockumentary about the adventures of the title character, a Kazakhstani TV journalist who's touring America. It's one of the most vulgar films I've ever seen, but it is soooo funny. It's doubled-over, tears-streaming, braying-laughter funny. In a decade overflowing with top-notch mockumentaries (Best In Show, Trailer Park Boys, The Office {UK}, The Office {US}), Borat is the funniest.Now, this movie is not for everyone. I believe that Borat's R rating is another example of the MPAA's incompetence. This film should have been rated NC-17 due to the pervasive, graphic, profane content. This is not a family movie. I can't imagine watching this film with my family. I'd be mortified at the prospect of watching it with the Manson family, for Pete's sake. But get together a few thick-skinned adults and maybe a couple of beers and Borat is an hour and a half of hilarity. The laughs just never stop.
Borat is a character created and portrayed by British comedian and actor Sacha Baron Cohen, and he's one of only two or three people in the film who are in on the jokes. The humor comes from the nonchalance with which Borat says horribly racist, sexist, disgusting things to strangers who can only react with confusion, bewilderment, anger ... and sometimes with delight. After all, the rest of the people in the film… politicians, salesmen, frat boys, etc... aren't in on the joke. They think that Borat is a real person. Imagine a bizarro version of Candid Camera. Imagine Jackass or The Tom Green Show if they were actually funny. Better yet, imagine Andy Kaufman if he'd ever realized his potential.
And if Cohen is willing to make others look silly in his film, it's nothing compared to what he puts himself through. Cohen will do anything for a laugh. He makes Will Farrell look restrained. His own body is his best prop, and he literally strips himself of any possible pride during the course of this movie. One scene, involving a nude and public fistfight, is simultaneously hilarious, awkward, juvenile and appalling. Every detail of Cohen's anatomy is visible, except for that which is hidden by a black bar … and even the specifics of the black bar itself serves as yet another joke. I've no doubt that, had he had a better idea, Cohen would have forgone even that modesty.Borat is uproariously funny … and after you've finished the film, watched all of the DVD extras, and you think you've laughed at everything associated with the movie, you can check the internet and read reviews that say things like this:
"Borat, the old-world specimen of masculis ignoramus from an underdeveloped half-Muslim nation, stands in for a world we didn't have to think much about before 9/11, and the people Borat talks to become the symbolic heart of America — a place where intolerance is worn, increasingly, with pride." - Entertainment Weekly
"Borat is not just blatant but proselytizing ... his target isn't really (Kazakhstan) ... it is rather the domain of the "great warlord Premier Bush," red states in particular." - Village Voice
The picture takes the country's temperature at a rather fraught period in our national life... That Borat finds the streak of poison in American life mitigates the potential perception of "Borat" as some Muslim-bashing movie for a self-satisfied Western audience." - SFGate.com
And on and on and on. It's really funny. Even after the movie has been released, Borat was still getting strangers to act like fools. These reviews, of course, say far more about the reviewer than they do about the film. After all, most movie critics are "urban sophisticates," and the only thing that matches their love for themselves is their hatred of middle America, where most of Borat takes place. Nonetheless, gay-pride paraders, New Yorkers and LA street people are prodded and parodied as well. Nobody is safe from Borat.
This movie isn't high-brow comedy. Hell, it isn't low-brow comedy. This is sub-brow comedy. I suppose that only a high-fallutin' film critic would feel the need to justify his or her enjoyment of a movie like this by convincing himself or herself that it's "culturally significant." Of course, Borat himself would probably find these reviews "very inform of politic and customs of society in US and A." As for Cohen, I'm sure he's laughing all the way to the bank. Andy would be proud.
Borat preview:
Comments:
You SHOULD be delighted; this is a great review and one that matches those of most of the people I respect, few of whom are real film critics. Please do more FilmGeeks stuff
*Claps hands in circular formation
BIG ROUND OF APPLAUSE! Wonderful review. So glad I kept checking back to this blog.
BIG ROUND OF APPLAUSE! Wonderful review. So glad I kept checking back to this blog.
NICE!
You know of all the people who looked like idiots, it was the frat boys who later objected to the way they were "depicted"?
You know of all the people who looked like idiots, it was the frat boys who later objected to the way they were "depicted"?
On a few levels I kinda liked Borat. On many many more levels, I was offended and angered by it.
I sat in the audience, a pretty packed house, and witnessed the laughter of so many people there. And I later read one commentator who mistakenly said that when the black hooker showed up, her presence drove the Christian pastor and his wife away because she was black. I knew from the get go that they fled because she was a hooker and they didn't want to be associated with a party where hookers were present -- it would have been detrimental to that pastor's reputation in the comunity for him to stay. That doesn't mean the pastor's wife can't minister to hookers when he isn't around. But he was right to leave when he did. I made no connection with her color. Such Rohrshack assumptions are beyond unfair. And many people are treating this film like a truthful exposition of America.
The assumptions made about Christianity by the audience were just so off base. And the lack of similar treatment of "Blue States" culture in this film was very imbalanced.
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I sat in the audience, a pretty packed house, and witnessed the laughter of so many people there. And I later read one commentator who mistakenly said that when the black hooker showed up, her presence drove the Christian pastor and his wife away because she was black. I knew from the get go that they fled because she was a hooker and they didn't want to be associated with a party where hookers were present -- it would have been detrimental to that pastor's reputation in the comunity for him to stay. That doesn't mean the pastor's wife can't minister to hookers when he isn't around. But he was right to leave when he did. I made no connection with her color. Such Rohrshack assumptions are beyond unfair. And many people are treating this film like a truthful exposition of America.
The assumptions made about Christianity by the audience were just so off base. And the lack of similar treatment of "Blue States" culture in this film was very imbalanced.
