Borat 2006
This movie is about what I expected. I had seen Borat on Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show, and other places, so I knew the shtick. But I also wanted to see it for myself as Borat interacted with unwitting people (I wonder how unwitting in some cases). It’s like candid camera or something, only with really vile humor.
I had heard that the movie was a commentary on Americans and that Borat’s boorish behavior was in parallel with ordinary Americans. And there are a few people in the movie who show a very ugly side, often without provocation. But there are other people who are pushed very hard by Borat’s awful behavior and show incredible patience and gentleness in trying to steer a strange, ill-mannered foreigner into the American mainstream. Another technique is for him to say fairly normal things and then get more and more extreme. You can see just about every time that right as he crosses the line he loses people. He’s baiting people but they don’t bite. To me that was reassuring (though a cruel joke on genuinely nice people). To say the film is anti-american is to have missed most of what happened on screen.
While the movie itself tries to string together a plot as Borat makes his way across the country to meet Pamela Anderson, the DVD extras give free rein to random footage of Borat. Those short random snippets are just as funny as anything in the movie and lift my overall score from a B- to a B+. Here again we see very patient (a grocery store manager with the patience of Job, who answers “cheese” every time Borat asks him what is in 100 different packages of cheese) people trying to help Borat until he crosses the line (a very Christian southerner who defends against one of Borat’s anti-semitic remarks by saying “Jews are God’s people” when some would have just let it pass). Also included are various talk show appearances by Borat promoting the film with some funny results.
This is definitely R rated, maybe worse. The jokes are primarily sexual, scatological, and racial. But if you don’t mind that, it is probably worth watching. Don’t skip the bonus material or you will really miss out.