**1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Sacha Baron Cohen and Ken Davitian
Directed by Larry Charles & written by Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Todd Philips, and Peter Baynham
2006
84 min R
IMDb summary (with F&SN additions): A fake documentary in which “Kazakhstani TV personality Borat” (played by actor Sacha Baron Cohen) “is dispatched to the United States to report on the ‘greatest country in the world.’ With a documentary crew in tow, Borat becomes more interested in locating and marrying Pamela Anderson than on his assignment.”
So in case you didn’t know, here’s the gimmick: real-life comedian Sacha Baron Cohen pretends to be Kazakh Borat and uses this disguise sometimes to humiliate other real people on camera and sometimes as a sketch comedy figure in a fictional universe.
I was distracted by trying to tell real stuff from fake stuff. Is anyone really booing him at the rodeo? You can hear booing, but no one in the stands behind him appears to be booing. You can add a booing sound to video using even the cheapest software. Or how about the hooker? Her dead giveaway as an actress is when she sits next to Borat as he drives – their truck is obviously being towed by a camera truck; it’s the only way to get that shot.
And speaking of the ice cream truck he drives around – he doesn’t really get that at the real-life car dealership he visits. We’re asked to assume that because he’s told “Let me show you our cars” and BAM – hard cut, he’s driving an ice cream truck. And how about the really awful guy who talks to him backstage at the rodeo – is that guy even at the rodeo? Is that “backstage at the rodeo” even a real rodeo, or is it staged miles and months away? When Borat and his producer chase each other naked in the middle of a convention center and are chased down by security guards, isn’t it a bit peculiar that no one thinks to chase down the camera man (and possible boom mic operator) running after them? And how about the lawsuits against the film – publicity stunts, anyone?
And how about the Pentecostal revival? Borat does very little there, funny or otherwise. The joke is that he lies to people trying to be nice to him. Take that, boorish Americans, being polite to foreigners! One imagines the target audience simply looking at the sheer existence of a Pentecostal revival and finding it hilarious. Try to imagine Borat pulling the same gag with an equally demonstrative Hindu or a Whirling Dervish get-together. Would that same target audience choose not to laugh at the brown peoples, attributing their behavior instead to cultural differences and religious expression? Consider the racism in that double-standard: that “lesser” brown peoples are not developed enough to have gotten past religion but white people should know better. But I digress.
So there is Borat the fictional character existing in a fictional universe with other fictional characters, who is ignorant and innocent and forgivable. And then there is Sacha Baron Cohen in the real world with real people, and he is not ignorant or innocent. He is merely punishing people for being polite to a stranger. Among “Borat’s” goals, according to piles of reviews in delirious praise of it, is to highlight America’s xenophobia. So Baron Cohen does this by finding Americans who are friendly to his foreigner – taking him to dinner, giving him a lift, submitting to interviews, letting him speak to a crowd – and then humiliating them on camera.
Perhaps this is why the most satisfying moments in the film are when people – New Yorkers in particular, God bless ‘em – tell Baron Cohen to “fuck off.”
Mostly “Borat” is a comedy of manners. The movie highlights how Americans have become so non-confrontational that we will smile and nod politely at just about anything. Borat and his producer chasing each other naked through the convention is funny, but even funnier is the naked elevator ride to it. Other passengers simply look away. The freedom to swing one’s fist just shy of another’s nose has translated in this modern age to a laissez-faire attitude of “do whatever you want, just don’t touch me or make me look at it.”
Many critics go along with the movie’s cries of prescience and assert that polite, non-committal nodding is equal to whole-hearted agreement. They think that not wanting a black hooker in the house is “racist” and not simply not wanting a hooker in the house. They think that not wanting a stranger to kiss us on the lips on a New York subway is “homophobic,” and not just good sense. (Let me repeat that: a lip-kiss from a stranger on a subway.) What the movie really demonstrates is the lengths we will go to and the allowances we will make if someone irritating has an accent and we just want him out of the store.
Other than that, Borat is only a mildly amusing character, certainly more deserving of a movie than SNL-sketch characters like “It’s Pat!” or “A Night at the Roxbury” but nowhere near the fascination of caricatures like Napoleon Dynamite, Wayne & Garth, or Walter & The Dude. He is socially inept first and a character second and the rules of his social ineptitude can change at a moment’s notice. Wayne Campbell and The Dude are eccentrics first and their social maladjustment springs from it, not the other way around.
Still, it’s not that I’m saying everything “Borat” wants to say about America isn’t true, it’s that he has to work harder to make his movie anything more than preaching to the choir, just showing people what they already expect to see. But it’s all good. I used an expired coupon to see “Borat” for free. And since that’s funny, it gets Baron Cohen’s approval, right?
Finished Saturday, December 16, 2006
Copyright © 2006 Friday & Saturday Night
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