..but don't forget to think

Rating: 8/10 (9 April 2007)

Sacha Baron Cohen is a fantastic actor and social commentator. He had been doing similar work for years, but this movie allowed him to reach a much larger audience, and get much more attention than he would have ever attracted through television. With a bit more of a budget, he has made a great film to cement Borat in cinematic and pop culture history.
While I have the utmost respect for Cohen and do not believe he is racist or ill-intentioned, I do worry a bit about people using the popularity of Borat as a green light for humor that actually IS racist or ignorant. Borat is funny because it exposes the ridiculousness of such behavior, and encourages us to question the roots of our own xenophobia. Cohen is not making fun of Kazakstan, he is making fun of our own ignorance of other countries, of the latent feeling that Eastern Europe is full of tiny backwards countries where the things he describes are perfectly normal. If people miss this point, then the joke really is on them.