Brain-rot: Cultural Dumbing Down of America for Make Wealthy Insensitive and Greedy Hack Comedian

Rating: 1/10 (18 January 2007)

How to adequately describe Sasha Baron Cohen's BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERlCA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN? How about lame? And exploitive.
And vulgar.
Amateurish.
Cheesy.
Sleazy.
Anti-Semitic.
Racist.
Hateful.
Homophobic.
Corrupt.
Insultingly contemptible.
And most of all: Unfunny. Excruciatingly unfunny. Extremely excruciatingly unfunny.
Is there anything positive that can be said about BORAT-BLAH-BLAH-BLAH? There sure is: It's short. Yet, at 84 minutes it still drags on interminably. And the amazing thing is that even though writer/star Cohen and his director Larry Charles filmed many hours of material, this sloppy hodge-podge of cheap shots and crude gags is apparently the best they could scrape up and slap together. This is the funniest stuff they could find? Apparently so. But when you start with garbage, you can't expect haute cuisine -- but something at least non-toxic would have been nice.
Even marking the continued slow decline of the so-called mockumentary, a genre of comedy pioneered with films like Rob Reiner's THIS IS SPINAL TAP and Woody Allen's TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN and ZELIG, BORAT is nothing less than an embarrassment. Evidently, it is meant to be a satire of reality TV and/or crude travel documentaries, but BORAT has more in common with the tactless trash made by pseudo-journalists like Michael Moore. Like Moore and his ilk, when true creative inspiration is nonexistent, Cohen sets up real people in booby-trapped situations designed to mock and humiliate them. And then he hides his cunning dishonesty and lack of ethics behind the claim he is using deception to find out how people really act and what they truly believe. Truth through lies. How Orwellian. And beyond this hypocrisy is its sheer cowardice and laziness in attacking easy targets. The result is less like cinema verite and more like a nihilistic "Candid Camera."
British comic Cohen plays Borat Sagdiyev, supposedly a TV reporter from Kazakhstan, a poor country in Eastern European which inexplicably has a TV station, but no toilets. Consistency isn't one of this film's strong points: Borat's hobby is collecting humiliating Polaroids of women on the john, yet later he seems to have no idea what a toilet is or how to use it. And though he can quote Clint Eastwood movies, he apparently doesn't know what a turtle is. Borat's level of intelligence and sophistication fluctuates according to how low the film wants to go for a joke -- and there seems to be no end to the depths. Anyway, Borat heads to the United States to make his documentary and prove America is an ugly place; but ultimately the film only proves that our immigration laws are far too lax.
In an insipid one-note performance, Cohen milks the ignorant peasant bit far beyond its meager credibility. His whole shtick is stolen from Bronson Pinchot's Balki Bartokomous, which he copied from Andy Kaufman's Latka Gravas, who imitated Bill Dana's Jose Jimenez, who owed a lot to Chico Marx. All and all, it has all been done better, and with greater affection by real immigrants like Yakov Smirnoff. While each progression has made the basic character increasingly dim, Cohen takes the archetype a giant leap downward by making his characterization utterly hateful and devoid of charm. The sweet naivete that has always defined the foreign visitor stereotype is all but gone with Cohen draining his smirking and leering Borat of all traces of innocence. You'd be hard pressed to find a more contemptible lout anywhere this side of "The Jerry Springer Show."
Worse, Cohen is an opportunist, a rapist/con man who time after time is shown gaining the good graces of innocent people who welcome him and befriend him, only to have their kindness repaid through ridicule and exploitation. Cohen is being praised as a creative genius when it is all too apparent he is an immoral manipulator. And since the entire film builds to an attempt to kidnap actress Pamela Anderson, you can add celebrity stalker to the list.
But the nauseating thing about BORAT is not Cohen's predatory approach to comedy or even the film's cold-blooded indifference to human dignity -- or for that matter even the public's willingness to once again to be treated so condescendingly -- but that this whole unsightly mess has been embraced by critics who should know better. When the Sasha Baron Cohens and the Tom Greenes and the Michael Moores and the South Park guys and all the other cultural bullies spew their bile at the audience, their snide, antisocial sadism always seems to be forgiven because "Come on, guys, it's a just joke."
"Is nice!" says Borat. No, it's not nice. It's pathetic.