Borat - the Movie Review

I was fortunate enough to attend the pre-screening of "Borat"-the movie last Thursday - a week before its official release in the US.

I have to say, it was one of the most hilarious films I have ever seen. I must have got a year's worth of laughter: during one sequence, I must have laughed non-stop for 15 minutes, with tears on my eyes, the whole lot. You'll know the scene I am talking about when you see the movie, but let me just say, it involves 2 naked men and a lot of unaware bystanders.

Unlike many people in America, I am actually well familiar with Borat's work from "Da Ali G Show". I love Borat's skits on unassuming Americans, when he makes total idiots out of people with a serious face. He particularly likes embarrassing Americans, who have absolutely no clue about Kazakhstan and take everything he says for face value, by trying to kiss them at greeting, making totally politically incorrect remarques, putting them in very dubious situations and flirting with women left and right. He does, after all, have a very big "khram" and he is Kazakhstan's 6th most famous person.

So the movie is largely based on those skits, assembled in a sequence according to the basic plot: Borat goes to America to explore its culture with hopes to find it useful for his own nation. Of course, a movie would not be a movie produced by a bunch of Americans if it didn't have a fairly primitive sub-plot involving a lady, but that's a minor drawback. The bigger criticism is that some of the circumstances from this sub-plot have not been developed to their full potential in the movie, such as scenes with frat boys, for instance. The same can be said about some of the interviews with more well-known people, which could have been given more footage.

But I suppose Baron Cohen did not want to make his movie overly political. It has enough jokes as it is to make most Americans raise eyebrows in disbelief: here's your anti-semitism, homophobia, misogynism, all sorts of racial bigotry. These are just some of the things that Americans are afraid to talk about ever in public, and Borat, being from a "foreign" culture, gets away with making these jokes loud and clear (and with a funny accent). By the hysterical laughter in the audience, I can conclude that Americans have themselves got tired of politically correct rules they have imposed on themselves and that it is time for humour to become funny again, rather than the toothless, cowardly comedy that white men in the US are allowed to do.

So, mimicking Borat, I give my two thumbs and a grin to the movie.

In fact, I still laugh out loud when I recall certain scenes from it.