Weak even on the noteworthy points

Rating: 1/10 (17 February 2008)

This movie is a disaster, because:
1. some parts of it should be dismissed for lacking any real object of parody 2. some parts should be dismissed and disqualified for the deceptive, manipulative and exploitive methods used in their filming 3. the few remaining noteworthy points fall flat because of unimaginative representation, weak humour...or simply because they get lost in all the folly. 4. and last, but not least, because it steals songs from movies I love and utterly profanes them by using them in trivial scenes and in ways, which make no sense whatsoever.
On the first point, many reviews here and elsewhere have pointed out the the factual folly of the movie. That people, culture and conditions in Kazakhstan have little resemblance to those of Romania has already been made clear for those, who lack the cultural background to figure it out by themselves. (Although in some reviews, one still can read comments like "The booming Russian ethnic score melts into Harry Nilsson's "Everybody's Talking' At Me"...well, at the least it is not a Russian score booming, eh). What has often been overlooked, though, is the essence of this factual folly - the movie has no object of parody. What it aims at? Does it aim at the gypsies? Does it aim at the uneducated or minority groups in society? Does it aim at the generalised "Eastern Europe"? Or probably South-eastern? Or why not the whole "East Camp"? These possible "objects" of parody are so complex, that one should make his point carefully and clearly. Otherwise, all I hear is a loud, ignorant, unimaginative Blah-Blah.
If the film-makers wanted to parody some traits or qualities, they should have made up a fictitious place, or should have found a way to parody those qualities without attributing them to any community.
Of course, we could be more permissive and lenient, say, by imagining that the author actually meant his object of parody to be incongruous. In other words, to assume that the author deliberately made the image of Borat and his culture the way he assumed ("ignorant and narrow-minded")Americans would perceive it. That might have, even if clumsily, worked  satirize America not only be depicting the cultural shock and all the prejudice, but by actually making the supposed object of this prejudice consistent with it from the very beginning. Unfortunately, this assumption does not seem to be true. This simply cannot work with the narrative in first person, singular.
The second point is also well known. Yet, many people seem to not pay Enough Attention. It's not funny or acceptable to film and use people without their permission. It is even less funny and acceptable to manipulate and provoke them into saying something stupid and take advantage of it. It is absolutely not funny and is kind of illegal to deceive people about the purpose of the filming and the ways they would be used. And is downright immoral and disgusting to do so to poor, uneducated people who just try to make ends meet. Why, have the authors imagined that those people are too far to see the movie, too stupid to grasp what's going on or too poor to sue? Oh, I hope the things would get right in court.
As for the third point, well, if after all, we still want to consider the rest of the film what do we get? We get the problem of anti-Semitism and the problem of Americans' prejudiced and narrow-minded view of the world. Both very important problems And Yet. The Jewish moments in the movie lacked power  the anti-Semitic images were "classic" and widely exploited (the Satanic images with the horns, the Jews as torturers of Jesus and his followers, the cockroaches as allusion to Jews' representation in the 30s) yet they failed to convey any insights about anti-Semitism; the anti-Semitic parody itself was weak and bleak...The author's Jewish background makes this all the more incomprehensible, as one might have expected a more perceptive and insightful treatment of the subject from a member of the Jewish community. Most of Americans' prejudice parody should be dismissed, because of the manipulative means by which it was filmed. Yes, it is important to expose hypocrisy, prejudice and bigotry in society. It is even more important to expose those quality in the most powerful nation in the world, and all the more a nation which assumes a pose of moral rectitude and moral universalism. But. There are more intelligent and acceptable ways to do so. We are looking for something more convincing and insightful than the candid camera effect.
On the fourth point there is not much to be said. Anybody who have watched Kusturica's movies should know what I mean. Anybody who has not, in my opinion, would benefit a lot of doing so.
On the whole, this movie is an insult to the public and the only real parody is produced by the viewers who cannot realize what they are duped into. The object of this parody is the ignorance, and worse the illusion some people have about "understanding" things; the assumption that they are, therefore, entitled to opinion about what those things are and what should be done about them. Unfortunately, this parody is lost on those very viewers.