Still pretty funny and as long as all copies of films like Beerfest exist, still relevant.

Rating: 7/10 (23 June 2009)

I like the Borat film, I like it a lot. In some regards, it is anti-thesis to all those crass, American produced 'comedies' that usually, often predominantly, rely on limp portrayals of Europeans as a source of humour. This might come in the form of the endless disregarding of people from many-a nation in 2006's Beerfest; to the loose, sexy Eastern European girls in the American Pie films and even onto the weak, intermittent representations of Europeans in EuroTrip – which may have had a lot of good stuff going on around all the sloppy other content, but that doesn't excuse what it presents us at the worst of times. Borat is the film that presents a similarly shocking Eastern-European-come-Western-Asian stereotype in Borat Sagdiyev (Baron Cohen) and exploits what little knowledge genuine Americans really have about the places, indeed the continent, that they lampoon so often.
I suppose it is a fighting fire with fire, a using of a stereotype or a negative representation in order to actually uncover the larger levels of tunnel vision some American's have on the world around them. But rather than just produce an out-and-out film in which American characters are presented in a typically naive or even stupid manner; the makers here have used real people, saying unscripted things, to act as characters instead and it is infinitely more funny than any low-brow, crass and desperate visual joke-come-representation as seen in the said films.
Borat and his film-making partner Azamat Bagatov (Davitian) travel through America, specifically to California from New York after Borat realises someone called Pamela Anderson exists, getting into mis-adventures, scraps, scrapes and undergoing a brilliant mock-journey of self discovery. Borat is the ultimate fish-out-of-water, and yet he dominates his respective locations when interviewing and speaking to other Americans. If the Kazakhs find offence in Borat, than it would have initially been born out of Borat's naivety to his surroundings in mistaking an elevator for a hotel room and a toilet for a wash basin. The specific size of a room and purpose of everyday-for-us appliances act as reasons to chuckle at Kazakhs. There is also an opening ten or so minute segment in which Borat's supposed home-land is put across as less-than desirable.
But from a certain point on in, the laughs snowball at the expense of Americans: a desperate car-salesman really wanting to unload an automobile on a seemingly unsuspecting foreigner; a gun shop salesman trying to offload a gun by exclaiming it's especially good for killing Jews; a rodeo gathering that express grossly mis-judged statements on the world and those around them whilst quite clearly in the presence of rolling cameras and an R.V. full of kids, the very audience the films mentioned in the first paragraph are aimed at, equally displaying a shocking disregard to most things around them.
While the things and statements most of Borat's victims come up with are deeply offensive, it is the very notion someone would be willing to utter these things on camera to complete strangers that is the most distressing thing. If we laugh, we laugh at the audacity more than the statements; if we laugh at the feminists, who themselves might well be victims of discrimination or prejudice in the past, we laugh at their reactions that someone would be so-bold as to say the things Borat says to them; things that I would not assume, in any way, reflect personal feelings on the author's behalf.
The important thing is that the author's are additionally able to laugh at themselves when, in a particular interview with a coloured politician who is introduced rather unnervingly via voice-over, uncovers a homosexual encounter Borat recently and unwittingly engaged in. Interestingly, the few locations Baron Cohen is unable to force reactions are in the form of a motel run by an elderly Jewish couple that quickly turns into a bit of a horror parody as they dare eat the offerings given to them by the couple, as well as an extremely tolerant group of individuals in the Deep South that Borat has dinner with. He manages to insult the host's wife and mistake a 'retiree' for a 'retard' before finally facing the fact he must flee on account the authorities are called. As very raw and very real moments of situation comedy, they work an absolute treat.
The film's final third revolves around a would-be romance with a certain Pamela Anderson, someone Borat is so dense that he initially assumes her Baywatch character to be someone of real life flesh and blood. When Borat does hit the skids and the chips are down, the film reels off into a mock sense of 'where one belongs' and that friendship is actually a really important thing and, despite being in the most powerful nation in the world, it's important to remember where one's roots lie getting across a sense it's easy to be seduced by surroundings and short-term goals when you have so much riding for you, initially. The pastiche is a wonderful send up of other recent comedies' final acts, After School Special and Superbad in particular, in which the characters realise their goal is elusive and that they must respect what they have.
Borat is a much better film than Ali G Indahouse, a film that takes rude, crude and low-brow material and turns it around so that those making an absolute packet out of it can be sent up. With the imminent release of Brüno, Baron Cohen is gaining in confidence and taking his characters out of more Western Euopean nations before unleashing them at Americans. The very effeminate personality of the character twinned with that very distinct but very deliberate German accent could spell trouble for some, cracking entertainment for others.