Borat: A review by Chris Garton

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Starring Sacha Baron Cohen, Ken Davitian, and Pamela Anderson. Directed by Larry Charles

Who it’s for: People looking for a good belly laugh, but not offended by a bit of naked wrestling and slandering (all in good fun) of pretty much anything you may or may not believe in.

Who it’s not for: People with delicate dispositions who are offended easily. Also, if you are asthmatic, at least make sure you have an inhaler. This movie is a workout.

The plot of this movie is easy to recap. A small time journalist from a small town in Kazakhstan decides to come to America to make a documentary about what makes us so great. Hilarity ensues. While watching TV in his New York hotel room, he sees Pamela Anderson in a rerun of Baywatch. He falls in love. Hilarity ensues. He convinces his producer to go with him to Hollywood so that he may marry this Pamela Anderson. They buy a vehicle and take a cross country road trip. Hilarity ensues.

I don’t want to give away too many of the punch lines, but this is not a comedy that relies on punch lines. Cohen is a master of the ambush, dependent upon the reactions of people who are not in on the joke. To us, who are in on the joke, the situations he gets in are almost unbelievably hysterical for the simple fact that the situations are almost unbelievably uncomfortable for the participants who are not in on the joke. It is also remarkable that Cohen and his team did not get arrested during the making of this film. They may have, for all I know, but that gives you some idea of the lengths this man is willing to go to in order to get the laugh he wants.

Besides being one of the funniest movies you will ever see, there is something else extremely interesting about this film. Borat himself is a raging anti-Semite (Cohen is actually Jewish himself) and incredibly misogynistic. There are several scenes that, besides being very, very funny (I’ve run out of synonyms), also highlight some of America’s deep-seated fears and prejudices. Borat exposes these fears, and we laugh at the hypocrisy, and are inwardly horrified that such beliefs still exist. There is a scene where Borat is at a Rodeo in Texas, talking to one of the cowboys. The cowboy tells him that people get nervous around individuals who look like Muslims. He tells Borat he might want to shave his mustache, so he’d look more Italian, maybe. He says “I see somebody who looks Islamic, I get to wondering what kind of bomb he’s carrying around, know what I mean?” Borat points out that he is Muslim. One message I took from this movie is that, often, those most easily offended are the ones doing the most offending.

Perhaps I am reading too much into this. Borat is, in the end, the funniest movie of the year. Sacha Baron Cohen has an uncanny ability to stay in character in situations where I would have trouble controlling my bladder. He is one of the best at improvisation, and he even shows some acting range in this movie with a couple of quietly moving scenes in between hilarious bits. Unfortunately, this type of comedy depends upon the unsuspecting participants not knowing that they are talking to an actor, so this pretty much wraps it up for Borat. I give it five out of five stars. *****