Americans, stupid

Rating: 10/10 (7 November 2006)

(Now here is improv comedy at its best, or worst, depending on your point-of-view. On a dreary, rain-soaked day in Virginia, this flick eased my Election Day jitters.)
In "Borat!: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," the new film from director Larry Charles and starring "Da Ali G Show" Sacha Baron Cohen of Britain as his Kazakhstan-born alter-ego Borat Sagdiyev, the U.S. and A gets a hilarious dose of its own medicine in showing the world our ignorance of places we only see on the news. (How many of us can point out the Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan on a map? Hint: It's NOT a part of the Middle East, as its Middle Eastern-sounding name might imply.) In recent weeks, "Borat!" has received the scorn of not only folks here at home (who claim the film is pure propaganda - overlooking the fact it's a satire, not a political piece), but of officials high up in the Kazakhstan government, who have denounced his portrayal of their country as a bunch of backward hicks, as well as his false representation of Kazakhstan. In "Borat!," a quasi-documentary/movie, Borat is sent by his government to the United States to learn the economic, racial, and social traits that could be adopted on his native soil. On a hilarious whirlwind tour through New York, Washington, D.C., North Carolina, Georgia, Texas and finally California, we get to see that we are not so perfect ourselves. During these Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Borat and his pudgy sidekick Azamat Bagatov (Ken Davitian) try America on for size. Borat learns to drive an automobile, is coached on humor and etiquette, purchases an ice cream truck, crashes a rodeo (which seems to get the worst of the skewering when Borat eviscerates the National Anthem), buy a bear (for protection, and also rides along in the back of their truck, and scares the daylights out of passing children), stay overnight at a bed & breakfast run by an elderly Jewish couple, ransack a hotel room in a naked brawl (that climaxes when the two barge in on a mortgage meeting), hangs out with drunken frat boys, gets "saved" by Pentecostal Christians, and Borat lusts for former "Baywatch" babe Pamela Anderson. Borat's love affair with Anderson culminates in a cross-country journey to California to marry her, which has disastrous results. "Borat!" is as funny as it is offensive. Anyone with a weak stomach should definitely stay away. Already, "Borat!" is picking up nods as one of the funniest movies of all time, if not the funniest movie of all time; I'll have a hard time disputing that. As his anti-Semitic, woman-bashing alter-ego, Cohen is a natural, playing quite excellently on American ignorance and stupidity, and ransacking our politics in the process. In short, he loves playing both sides of the coin for fools - you'll either love him, hate him, or want to watch him be executed (which his government allegedly threatened to do if his movie was not a success). Few, if any, of Borat's subjects know they're being had. He takes great pride in establishing his country's glorious awkwardness, and then counter-balancing that against our own, backwards nation. I do suspect that we haven't seen the last of talking head Borat Sagdiyev, or his Cultural Learnings of America. Maybe Britain is next?
10/10