Total comic genius

Rating: 10/10 (14 November 2006)

This film takes the 'comedy of awkwardness / embarrassment' to its ultimate limit. Can xenophobia, racism, sexism, toilet humour and hairy naked men wrestling be funny? Oh yes.
You do need to know (as the girlfriend didn't...) that SBC's shtick is to interview unwitting (ideally stuffy and media hungry) people in character, as he did with Ali G etc. Doing this gets a laugh both because the character is so utterly crass and awful, and because the people he meets react a certain way with an apparently naive interviewer and a camera in front of them. Give some people enough rope and sure enough they'll hang themselves.
On the whole I'd say America comes off well from the whole thing - though certain Americans make themselves look crass, ignorant and offensive. Time and again people are courteous, tolerant and patient to an unbelievable degree - eg the driving instructor and the politeness coach. Add to this that SBC is a master of physical comedy and has absolutely no shame and you have a superb comedy film.
So much of the media is polished, predictable, corporatized, PC, gutless rubbish - look at the other releases this week, eg Santa Clause 3! - thank god someone can come along and produce a film like this.