"Is it 'cos I's old?" Sacha Cohen cons the chattering classes.......

Rating: 1/10 (14 April 2009)

Because I'm 68 years old I wasn't fooled for a minute by "Borat" any more than my father was fooled by "Triumph of the will".It is yet another movie purporting to be one thing whilst in fact being the exact opposite.Mr Baron Cohen fooled many of his Cambridge peers by making racism,sexism and pig-ignorance perfectly acceptable forms of humour under the guise of "satirising" them.His character Ali("Is it cos I's black?") G crudely mocked black stereotypes whilst our Sacha winked knowingly and said he was in fact mocking white people who behaved like black people...........yeah,right. Amazingly the media fell for it - or pretended to fall for it - and sat back to count the money. Some within the University were not happy with his explanation,but rather than be seen as having no sense of post - modern humour,held their peace.Thus encouraged,Mr Cohen,rich,sophisticated, middle-class Jewish Cantabrigian looked round for more easy targets and found that East Europeans - dirt - poor,Muslims,uneducated,unsophisticated and cut off from mainstream Western Society and values were absolutely hilarious.He could make them seem like inbred "untermenschen" and people would laugh because anything goes in post - modern irony baby... Even better,he could get his East European character - Borat - to go to America and rely on the Americans inborn good - nature and generosity to make themselves objects of derision as Borat/Cohen(the line between the two blurs somewhat)subjects them to his sophisticated scatological racist,sexist,xenophobic,anti - semitic misogynist rants and films their reaction.Brilliant.It's a wonder no one had ever thought of it before..........but of course they had and it was called "Candid Camera". So "Borat" is just the movie for you if you like to see ordinary decent people humiliated by an "Intellectual"who clearly considers himself vastly their superior. Don't be fooled for a moment - this isn't a smart satire on what's wrong with America,its an exploitative,crude,cruel and ultimately pointless exercise in sucking up to Guardianistas everywhere. If only they weren't too dazzled by their own cleverness to see it. I understand Cohen's next character is to be "Bruno",a camp European fashionista.Cutting edge stuff eh Sacha?...........