"Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan"
Rated R
Now playing
Borat's not exactly Playgirl material. So, the foreigner may be pressing his luck hoping to have "sexy time" with Pamela Anderson and making "romance explosion" on her tummy. But it's what Borat (British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen) goes through to reach the blonde bombshell as he travels from Kazakhstan to America that's truly priceless.
Aboard his ice cream truck (yes, one of those trucks that chime with kiddy music), with his disgruntled producer/sidekick Azamat Bagatov (Ken Davitian), the journalist travels cross-country and interviews numerous oblivious folks to learn about our culture and expose the prejudices and hypocrisies of the "U, S, and A."
The obscene comedy effortlessly, and never tirelessly, follows around the cartoonish reporter who's filming a documentary for a local TV station in his outrageous hometown, where his sister is the "fourth best prostitute," cows live in homes and the mechanic is also the abortionist.
There's a possibility those who see "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" will find the ignorance toward Jews and gays offensive. But there's a larger chance those shenanigans will be marked with laughter so intense that missing some of the action will require repeated viewings. And, keep in mind, the humor isn't caused from Borat poking fun at these groups (since he rarely does) but his ignorance toward American culture.
On the surface, Borat's goofy gags, like looking for the "pussy magnet" while purchasing a vehicle from a car dealership, may seem ludicrous. But Borat is revealing a much deeper truth by focusing on the stereotypes others, even Americans, use. By uncovering his own ignorance, he's doing the same with ours. While staying at a Jewish elderly couple's home, their hospitality is Borat's cultural paranoia. "They'll kill us, Azamat!" says Borat with a priceless fucked-over facial expression.
When he lands at a Gay Pride Parade in Washington, D.C., he confesses that these people – as he rubs up against them and grabs their crotches – are nicer than those in New York. "They say, 'I wash you in the shower.' They wash me in the shower," he confesses. As he retells a Republican congressman the situation, Borat is told that those people are known as homosexuals. He then asks, "You mean the guy who tried to put rubber fist in my ass was homosexual?"
In "Borat," no minority is spared. But Borat never expresses that he's racist, just ignorant. He throws around terms like black and white chocolate. In da 'hood, he's down with the young urban blacks, whom he tells, "Teach me how to be like you." And he's not resistant to falling for a hefty black prostitute.
The comedic climax comes when Borat and Azamat have "sexy time" where both men wrestle in a raw 69-position that ends with Borat, armed with a dildo, chasing the producer through the hotel.
With a bushy mustache and broken English, the Kazakh reporter baffles and offends his subjects, who either laugh at his ignorance or extort rage. And even if they do heat up, Borat just turns up the outrageous-meter. He goes as far as to ask the Veteran Feminists of America if it's true "woman have smaller brain than man?" Some of his subjects even reveal their own prejudices of others. At a rodeo, Borat gets a cowboy to confess his hatred for homos.
Cohen plays Borat like he's done this before. And he has. As the comedic genius of HBO's "Da Ali G Show," where one of the journalists he plays is a stereotypical flamboyant gay Austrian fashion reporter, Cohen's precise comic timing is put to good use in "Borat." Not one scene passes without milking teary-eyed laughter, which is due in part to Cohen's sensational improvisation, director Larry Charles (who has done a fine job with the low-budget look of the film) and editor Craig Alpert.
No question about it, the slapstick and culturally relevant film will go down as a dirty, outlandish mockumentary that exposes more about ourselves than Borat himself. Well, that's if we forget about the buck naked rendezvous with his buddy.
