most fearless, vulgar, and successful satire of the year

Rating: 10/10 (3 November 2006)

Even before I saw Borat: Cultural Learning of... I knew what I was in for. Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat on Da Ali G Show is possibly the most consistently funniest character of the lot of his creations. Just the theme music and the opening images of him running after a truck and swimming in a pool are funny. It's not hard for me to figure out why- Cohen gets what it is to lampoon current times- bring out the worst in people without even really trying. This is a tactic that is, of course, Mel Brooks inspired, as he was once quoted as saying of his film the Producers "my film rises *below* vulgarity." Once you see Borat you'll see what I mean, and if you've never watched the show don't fret, you may still find it to be a truly funny comedy on its own.
What's even more genius is how Cohen even figures in a storyline, however thin, to his movie. It would be one thing if it was just random vignettes spliced together, which could still make a great time. But there's a road-movie quality to the picture, as Borat and his friend Azamat Bagatov, go off to make a documentary about the US-of-A for his homeland of Kazakhstan. He suddenly comes across Baywatch- particularly Pamela Anderson- and finds his ultimate goal, to make her his wife by any means necessary (which includes, of course, bagging her, literally). So this becomes the template for the picture, and which leads to not only great comic scenes, including little ones that strike up a lot of good lines and gags (i.e. antique shop; the "gypsey" yard sale), but the kind of outrageous sequences that make my sides hurt thinking about them. The rodeo, the bed & breakfast (that might be my absolute favorite), and of course the "running of the Jews". Of course, complications come along, and sad times, but there could still be hope just yet- perhaps by Jesus?
All of this outrageousness would work a lot less if not for two main factors- 1) Cohen has a mind that never stops, and so his Borat is always on the move with a line or a small gag that ends up becoming part of the fold of the rest of the film (the retard line, heh), so the improvisation is at the highest caliber. 2) the people that he sets up are not even necessarily set-up all that well; what you see really is what you get, and not without too much by way of him 'tricking' these people. There was recently a small blurb in a Newsweek magazine where one of the people complained, after getting fired, that Cohen made him look bad. How can this be though if the person, among many others, don't get that it's a joke for a SECOND? It's almost a shame that (possibly) there will never be another round of Borat material after this. Like Andy Kaufman, soon Cohen's personalities will be known all too well, and will lose their flavor. But in the meantime, we do have this film, which is a kind of near-priceless work of satire by someone who has no shame, or rather has no shame in how far he goes with the material.
In other words, even if you don't think you might be much of a fan, give it a chance and see what might spark up. Borat, for all of his little quirks and un-knowable ways around him (e.g. the result of him going to the bathroom in a mannered Southern home), is never really a mean person, and with one exception of a violent outburst (you'll know it when you see it) is a kind of bumbling fool of a character too. Still, this doesn't stop Cohen, through Borat, showing what ugly things racism and stereotyping are in America, and in a sense this is kind of like a near-masterpiece compendium of the state of America right now. That we can at least laugh at it is a good sign, and all apart of the kind of Brooksfilm vein Cohen is descending from wonderfully. JINGJAMESH!