Borat - Save your money.

Rating: Null/10 (4 December 2006)

I want to say at the outset that I'm a school teacher. One thing that infuriates me frequently is the tendency of some children, usually below the age of 14, to say an inappropriate word in front of others and mistake this for humour. Unfortunately, I know now that it's not strictly limited to children; Sasha Baron Cohen obviously possesses this trait in spade-loads.
People have raved about how this movie exposes bigotry, how it shows Americans for what they really are. I don't know for sure if it does that. What I am certain of is that going out of your way to offend a kindly Christian pastor and his wife - people who are actually trying to make allowances for you, no less - isn't humour. It's simply being obnoxious. And this is one of the running themes of Borat.
Certainly, the film has some genuinely funny moments. Cohen is certainly a master at staying in character no matter what, and the interview on live TV is quite impressive (both for what Borat said, and for the way the interviewer handles what is clearly a very difficult situation).
But for all that, you couldn't shake the feeling that often Cohen was simply abusing people. I felt especially sorry for the Jewish couple running a Bed and Breakfast whose kindness is repaid by (allegedly comic) mistrust, and the owners of a civil war antique shop left some $450 poorer because Cohen felt like smashing some things just to get a rise out of them (was I the only person watching this and wondering if he carelessly smashed priceless, irreplaceable artifacts? Perhaps it's just my historian blood. . .).
We're trying to teach people today that whilst you can get a laugh by abusing others, it's not an attitude that should be encouraged. Cohen is a member of a frequently abused minority - the Jews, and surely he should understand what it's like.
Overall, this movie is not merely bad. It creates new definitions for badness in movies.
It did have one thing going for it, though: next time we're deliberating over which movie we should go to see, we can say "How bad could it be? It has to be better than Borat!"