Review: Borat

Next in my line of reviews, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

This was the longest 84 minutes I've had to sit through in a long time, and that includes some very awkward church services in my time. It was kind of like being at a real nice restaurant with my dear sweet grandmother, and everyone's enjoying themselves, the food's just been served, people are about to eat, and then gramma starts swearing loudly and making offensive remarks about minorities... She's your granny, so you don't want to tell her to shut the hell up, she won't pay any heed to subtle reminders because her mind is too far gone, the food just got served so people want to eat, but now can't enjoy the food, and everyone is staring... imagine being trapped within that type of moment...for 84 minutes straight. By 45 minutes into the movie, I had already picked up the DVD cover to see how much longer it was going to take. That's how I was so painfully aware of the passage of time.

Now, to be fair, the movie had some gut-wrenchingly funny parts, but the fact that an emaciated chicken is the main character of this grand total of about 2 minutes worth of footage should be telling.

I'm not sure where it went wrong, there really wasn't anything different from the small Borat segments that Sacha Baron Cohen has performed previously. I genuinely thought the TV segments were hilarious... but maybe that's where it needed to stay. It's kind of like my crazy drunken uncle in law who talks like Boomhauer with Tourette's Syndrome. He's really funny for about five minutes at a time, and then being around him just gets progressively more and more awkward to the point that "it's getting late" when the sun hasn't even dipped below the horizon.

I think the biggest problem with the movie is that it is movie-length.

This new genre forming, "The Uncomfortable Comedy" genre, is fascinating to me in that it's still relatively new and fresh. Normally comedies are intended as a release. They relieve the every day tension we get in the form of laughter, happy endings, and a smattering of plot. But ultimately, a comedy, up until the last year or so, has been about releasing tension, and making one feel relaxed and good at the end.

Then along came The Office... and we ended up watching Steve Carell expose us to 30 minute and 1-hour segments of some of the most awkward office moments that most of us have had to live through at least once in person, and sometimes multiple times. Then Little Miss Sunshine took us through that sort of setup for the first third of the entire movie.

Borat stretches this feeling out through the entire movie.

I know a lot of people loved it, thought it was hilarious, and said it was a brilliant social commentary that really makes us look inside of ourselves to see what's wrong with society and ourselves. They say it's a good excercise in Freedom of Speech, and pushes the bounds of mocumentaries into realms hitherto unexplored.

What I saw, however, was male genitalia, fecal humor, two fat naked men wrestling, more fecal humor, photos of "Borat's naked son", and, yes, more fecal humor. Framing and juxtaposed between these scenes were insults under false pretenses, and several acts which would almost certainly land a "real person" in jail, or dead from vigilante justice.

For this reason, I feel the need to do a split rating. If that last paragraph titilated you and made you say "Oh, COOL!" then you'll find Borat a 9/10 on your list. It is this crowd that likely gave Borat an Oscar.

If, however, you are anyone else, the rating is a 4/10, giving it 1 point for every funny moment in the film, and two for the chicken.



[edit on 4/2/2007 by thelibra]

I give it a 10. It was a great movie.


84 mins aint bad.

i personaly enjoy stupid jokes and laught like hell but there were some moments that werent just right....but still hase some great jokes

I have to agree with the OP. I am a HUGE ali-g fan, and i have seen every episode on HBO, and a few specials he has done in britian. Me and my friends were very dissapointed by the Borat movie. I guess i had such high hopes with all the good reviews and how everyone says its the funniest movie ever. It was too predictable, i can see how people liked it if they never seen Sasha do Borat before, but it was all old hat for me.