Stinking pile of bear scat

Rating: 4/10 (20 November 2006)

This movie was just downright awful. I like to think that I can be entertained by no brainer humor ( I sat through Kung Pow twice), and seeing new and outrageous racist humor is funny to me too. Both of which are in abundance here, but none of it is very good. Most of the humor, especially the anti semitic, seemed forced and really not that original. THe Blair witch project segment was pretty creative however, and at the very least Cohen sells his performance to the utmost, never letting himself in on the joke. Azamat also had a hidden depth to himself that he was never allowed as an actor to explore. With just a bit more effort, real development and emotion could have gone into these characters. The sad fact is that they are stereotypes of something that doesn't even exist, and any humor seen by them is IMO completely overridedby the naked wrestling scene. Whatever redeeming qualities the film had were just killed by that... Cold War humor just isn't funny anymore, nor is the characterization of Russian satellites as backwards and morally corrupt. More disturbing yet is the behavior of some of the victims of the movie. While the frat boys are forgivable, the rodeo owner and several others not featured in the movie show us that we still have a lot of problems as a nation. I'm also interested to see how the many lawsuits are going to turn out.