Borat
Review by Fritz Esker
Before I get started, I will inform you that Borat is pretty difficult to review without spoiling some of the jokes at least a little bit. So, if you have not seen the film and plan to, continue at your own risk.
Borat, directed by Larry Charles (of the Bob Dylan flop Masked and Anonymous) takes the TV character of Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen), a horribly anti-semitic and misogynistic television reporter from Kazakhstan, and puts him in an 82-minute movie. Borat travels to America with his producer (Ken Davitian) to make a documentary on America. Along the way, he sees Baywatch on TV and falls in love with Pamela Anderson. He then decides he must go on a cross-country odyssey from New York to California to make Anderson his wife.
This film is one of those somewhat rare works that manages to be simultaneously underrated and overrated. Borat’s most enthusiastic supporters think Cohen is a genius, a cunning satirist who exposes the evils of anti-semitism and American bigotry for what they are. Borat’s critics basically paint the film as crude, obnoxious, and all-too-willing to humiliate people in order to get a laugh. Both sides have a point.
At its best, the film is just plain funny. But, as has been noted by some other critics, it is not really satirical. The closest the film actually comes to satire is in its portrayal of anti-semitism. An early scene portrays a Kazakhstani festival called “The Running of the Jew,” which is sort of like a cross between the Sausage Race at Milwaukee Brewers baseball games and the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona. At one point, the female Jew caricature lays an egg and the children are encouraged to crush it before another Jew hatches. In perhaps the film’s funniest extended bit, Borat and his producer discover, to their horror, that the kindly old couple running the bed and breakfast they are staying at is Jewish. While it may not seem to be an earth-shaking revelation, in these scenes Cohen shows how completely and utterly ridiculous people look when they harbor a deep fear or hatred against any group, be it Jews, blacks, homosexuals, Muslims, or whomever. Some of its proponents wonder whether or not people would find this aspect of the film funny if they didn’t know Cohen is Jewish. Regardless of the performer’s ethnicity, these sequences would be funny. They are so obviously over-the-top and ridiculing the bigots, not the people they discriminate against, that the intentions should be clear to even the densest viewers.
Other than that, however, the film’s best scenes are not really satirical; they’re just hilarious. Borat’s speech at the rodeo, Borat mistaking a woman conducting a garage sale for a gypsy, the bear in the ice cream truck, and the scene in front of Graumann’s Chinese Theater are just out-and-out funny.
Now, to the darker side of Borat. Its opponents argue that the film gets its jollies from humiliating people. I think this is half-true. In some cases, the film pokes fun more at Borat than the person he is talking to (the befuddled weather man, the Jewish couple, the black youths, the used car salesman). In some cases, most notably the homophobic rodeo organizer, the person being poked fun at deserves to look like a jerk. But, in other cases (the dinner party, the antique store), it seems like Borat embarrasses the people he’s with just for the sake of embarrassing them. When examining this point, one must ask: exactly how much of Borat is staged? Some of it obviously is (the bear scenes, the Pamela Anderson scene, the scene involving extensive male nudity – more on this later). In other scenes, it is harder to tell. After all, would even the most stereotypically moronic frat boys not think something was a little odd when they picked up a bedraggled foreigner accompanied by a camera man? Would they really then be so stupid as to launch into racist and sexist remarks in front of the camera? I would be inclined to say no, but most people have met just enough drunken collegiate idiots to think it might be possible that their dialogue was not staged. Some critics, like Jim Emerson of the blog Scanners (well worth reading – it’s in our links section), state that the people must have signed release forms to appear on camera, so they can’t truly be victims or have minded too much. However, from what I have heard (and I heard this was alluded to in a Newsweek article I have yet to read), the releases are often rushed into the person’s hands in the most confusing way possible and/or the person signs before anything happens, rendering this defense of Borat moot.
The question of how much is staged, however, poses a more interesting dilemma. If, say, the scene at the dinner party or the antique store is staged, then what Cohen is doing is just a variation of what Ricky Gervais did so brilliantly in the TV show The Office – finding humor in life’s awkward moments. But, if he is simply ambushing unsuspecting people, then at times it becomes something decidedly more mean-spirited. However, the fact that the film makes anyone think about these questions makes it worthwhile. After all, we rarely examine why we think something is funny. We rarely examine the nature of comedy. At the very least, Borat does pose some provocative questions on this matter that are worth discussing.
On purely technical levels, the film has some flaws as well. The film has little to no flow; it feels incredibly rambling and episodic. When the jokes are going well, it’s not as noticeable, but during the drier patches, it becomes glaring. At times, it relies far too much on gross-out/shock value humor. Here, it seems more like an episode of Jackass featuring a legitimately talented character comedian. In fact, one such gross-out scene serves as a microcosm for the entire film. In this scene, which I alluded to earlier in the review, a naked Borat gets into a fight with his naked and incredibly obese producer (don’t ask). An awkward, homoerotic wrestling match ensues in their hotel room. It turns into a chase, taking the naked men through hotel hallways, a crowded elevator, and into a packed conference hall. The scene manages to be simultaneously hilarious, disjointed, and off-putting – just like the movie itself.
After all this discussion, you might be inclined to ask, with some exasperation, “Do you recommend the film or not?” I do recommend it. Considering all the hype going into the film, I think it is worth mentioning that this is not an all-time great comedy. It may not even be good enough to make my top ten list this year. But, it is frequently funny and, on that level, it works, even if it does make you at least somewhat uncomfortable while watching it.