Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
Wow, that's a long title. For the person that is going to memorize that entire title and at the ticket window say, "May I have [blank] tickets for Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," would really annoy me and waste my time and patience. By the time you purchase your tickets, you've already missed half of the movie. Just say "Borat" and move along.
Putting my gripe about the title aside, "Borat" is snot-dripping-out-of-your nose funny. It's that same type of grotesque, sick and twisted, yet ironically, hysterical slapstick humor that was hinted many times in the recently released movie "Jackass 2."
The level of raunchiness "Borat" consists of goes to the maximum with scenes featuring male nudity, including an almost pornographic male wrestling scene, poop, fart, and piss jokes, and other unparallel random stunts. The difference is that in "Borat", the character Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen) actually believes that he is doing all of these grotesque things for the better of the movie, instead of just doing them for cheap laughs.
With that said, "Borat" has a point. It's about a fictionalized, extreme satirical version of a reporter from Kazakhstan. Whereas in real life, Kazakhstan is a democratic, women-friendly country; however, in Borat's Kazakhstan, women have no rights, child prostitution is apart of everyday life, people drink fermented horse urine and everybody that lives in Borat's town is anti-Semitic and celebrates their anti-Semitism with an event called, "The Running of the Jew," which is similar to the running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.
Borat and his producer are assigned to report on America and learn about American culture. They plan to find all of the places and people that they need for their story while visiting New York, but it turns out that Borat needs to drive across the country, all the way to Hollywood to meet and hopefully marry who he thinks is the poster woman for America and American culture, Pamela Anderson.
The scenes leading up to the climactic wedding with Pamela Anderson are not left in the shadows. It is interesting because Borat's ignorance and stupidity, yet innocence and resiliency cause the people he interacts with to show their real selves. He talks to a group of elderly feminists who can't fathom a country that degrades women. He talks to a rodeo coordinator that at first seems to be an unbiased individual, but turns out to be an extremely right-wing conservative. He goes to a dinner party filled with Southern WASPs who accept that he is not toilet trained properly, but when he brings over a black woman as his guest, all hell breaks loose.
Cohen has transformed a side gig character on his past Ali G Show, and has made him a full-fledged human being. Besides the fact that he does every single press related interview in his character, in the movie, he embodies the whole essence of Borat and never lets you know that without the man-thong, mustache, weird wardrobe and bizarre misdemeanor, there is a normal guy under that facade.
Choking-on-your-own-phlegm-from-laughing-so-hard funny, Borat is shocking, spontaneous, and highly unpredictable, which makes it the best satirical comedy to come out this year besides "Thank You For Smoking."
I give Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. 4 out of 5 roses.
Reach the reporter at: monis.rose@asu.edu.
