The trailer is better

Rating: 3/10 (10 November 2006)

What a disappointment, especially after seeing the reviews "funniest movie ever!" "I couldn't stop laughing!" I'll admit, I thought the trailers were pretty funny but that was it, those were the best jokes. The movie just takes a couple of other much lower brow jokes and beats them to death and they, sadly, weren't as funny as the jokes I had already seen. Frankly, they weren't funny at all. I stopped laughing at poop jokes and sophomoric homophobia jokes when I stopped being a kid. I've seen other Borat skits and thought they were worth a laugh but, like the trailer, they were far better than this film. I got to admit, they did a good job of promoting this movie and even led skeptical me to think the film was going to better than the promise. I really didn't expect Cohen to dive straight into the toilet to find his material. Literally! I also was anticipating more development with the ethnic jokes, as some reviewers had claimed but he never gets out of first gear with them so they remain simple, two dimensional stereotypical embarrassments, far more effective as fuel for the prejudiced and the racist than as satirical commentary. That was a major disappointment. I know Mr. Cohen is Jewish, so it seems he is making fun of anti-Semitism but, unfortunately his material is poorly developed, clichéd and amateurish, so it won't give him the desired results, that is, if he wanted the "jokes" to have more effect than belly laughs for the primitive brain. At one point he states his manager does not want to fly in America because he does not want the Jews to do the same thing they did on 9/11. It might actually have been funny if, sadly, there weren't such a great number of dim witted, hate filled people, including many Americans, who actually believe this to be the case. Anti-Semitism is on the rise everywhere, just look at a lot of the messages on these message boards to confirm that. As Woody Allen stated when asked about the Holocaust "Records were made to be broken." Of course, the Holocaust never really happened, just ask the "experts" like Mel Gibson's dad. I never cease to be amazed at the hatred and scapegoating that comes about, usually as the result of bad, moronic fiction. Mr. Cohen's bad, moronic jokes won't assist him, despite his ethnicity. As any intelligent and honest student of history can tell you, the Nazis became very effective at turning innocuous little Jewish jokes and ordinary proverbs into raging, racist tirades used as fuel to run the death camps and the trains that took their cargo there. I really hope Mr. Cohen likes the money he'll make from this film, because that's all he'll end up getting from it. He failed to accomplish anything else with this venture, other than offending the people of Kazakhstan. That was completely unnecessary: he should have made up a fictitious country for his character to come from, then all the jokes about the backwardness would be funny because they don't belittle others with stereotypical crude jokes, particularly a place the vast majority of outsiders did not know existed prior to this movie. A lesson in comedy for Mr. Cohen: your jokes that take the stuffing out of the arrogant well-known (i.e. the rodeo segment) work because, well, they take the stuffing out of some arrogant well-known. Making some unknown little country the butt of your jokes is cruel and the tactic of a bully, which loses its comedic effect when the viewer realizes they will be nothing more than crude stereotypes, unless the viewer, (like too many, unfortunately) likes the cruel "humor" of the bully. I think you have potential to really be funny Mr. Cohen, but you lost me when you degenerated into sophomoric gags whether due to your laziness, desire to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and/or your lack of ability to develop and deliver smart, thoughtful material.