BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE
BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN

Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
20th Century Fox
Grade: C+
Directed by: Larry Charles
Written By: Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Peter
Baynham, Dan Mazer, story by Cohen, Baynham, Hines, Todd
Phillips
Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Ken Davitian, Pamela Anderson,
Pat Haggerty, Alan Keyes
Screened at: AMC Empire, NYC, 10/25/06
Opens: November 3, 2006

If "Borat" has a script known only to the people making the
film–namely Sacha Baron Cohen as the title character and Ken
Davitian as the "producer" of this mockumentary, then Cohen is
a daring fellow. He says much to offend the people with whom
he comes into contact, particularly people who have been for
centuries the butt of cruelty now here, now there, now in this
century, now in that. Specifically, some people in the movie
audience would be offended save for the fact that they know
Cohen is himself anything but homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-
women's rights and anti-gypsy. Quite the reverse. Like Claude Lanzmann, a serious documentarian who in "Shoah" pretended
to be neutral to bait former Nazis and their sympathizers, Cohen
aims to elicit remarks from people he encounters by pretending
either to be neutral, i.e. out of the loop; or downright racist,
sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and yes, even anti-gypsy.

There is no indication in the press notes to what extent the folks
he chatted with were "in" on the joke, yet this is one of the most
important things to know. For example, remember Alan Funt's
program from way back, "Candid Camera," in which Mr. Funt
used a hidden camera to get unsuspecting people to say or do
silly things? How would you react if you found out that Funt's
subjects were "in" on the whole deal and were play-acting?

Well, then, OK, let's assume that the people Cohen came into
contact with were oblivious, despite the presence of Anthony
Hardwick's and Luke Geissbuhler's lensing. Does Cohen
succeed in showing that cracks in America's reputation for
tolerance and even acceptance of people who are different from
the mainstream? Not necessary since one might argue that
with the amount of footage he took, he could easily have
selected the subjects with the most outrageous comments. Is
Cohen as funny, insanely, outrageously funny as some critics'
journals have said, principally Entertainment Weekly which
called it the funniest movie ever? No. There are laughs all
right, but after a while, despite the brevity of the film (eight-two
minutes), the gags become redundant, and in just one case
involving a mock, nude fight between Borat and Azamat in a
hotel room, the visuals are disgusting–and this comment from a
person who has seen it all.

The film's conceit is that Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen) is being
sent from his village in Kazakhstan (actually a gypsy area in
Romania) to the U.S. to learn about American culture and to see
how the Kazakhs can profit from that knowledge. He takes
leave of his sister with a big kiss, calling her "prostitute number
4 in Kazakhastan (she holds up her trophy) and kisses his
ancient mother, whom he declares is 43. Taking leave of the
"town rapist" he and his producer, Azamat (Ken Davitian) go to
New York but are diverted to California because Borat has fallen
in love with the TV image of Pamela Anderson.

While he is in America–and even before, when he's illustrating
the customs of Kazakhs–he does riffs on anti-Semitism,
homophobia and sexism–all of which he hopes will show his
movie audience the stupidity of people who hold these negative
beliefs. Since Cohen is Jewish, he feels most comfortable with
jokes about anti-Semitism, showing the "running of the Jew" in
his home village (the town Jew wears a big Satan mask while
villagers run from him as though they were all in Pamplona). He
tells the villagers to step on the egg laid by this Satan before it
hatches. He hesitates to board the plane since "the Jews
caused 9/11"; he stays in a bed-and-breakfast place run by an
elderly Jewish couple, which frightens Borat, who declares that
they are out to poison him; he watches roaches sneak under the
door and throws money at them figuring that they are satanic
forms of the owners. Is all this offensive? Not really, not when
you know in advance that it's a riff. Ditto the scene in which he
tells a group of feminists that women have brains the size of
squirrels and that equality with men is the nuttiest thing he's
ever heard.

At a rodeo, he is booed when he sings the national anthem as
though it were written for Kazakhs, calling Kazakhistan the
greatest country of all. When he tells a Texan that
homosexuals are "execute" in my country, the Texan replies,
"We're working on that here."

"Borat" is a series of vignettes, Saturday-Night-Live style, which
is fine, but if Cohen's aim in addition to entertainment is to
outrage people who are offended by his naivete, by his un-PC
beliefs, he seems to have succeeded with almost all who have
been to advance screenings, critics and regular folks alike. No
question: much of what goes on is funny, but side-splitting
funny? Grossly offensive? A comedic masterpiece? Not
particularly. If one thing is offensive, though, it's Variety critic
Leslie Felperin's review which indicates that "the terminally
humorless won't see the funny side." Sorry, Leslie, but people
who do not find "Borat" as hilarious as you simply disagree with
you. They are not "terminally humorless." At least, not
necessarily. "Borat" is neither terminally offensive nor
hilariously funny, nor does it say much about the American
culture.

Rated R. 82 minutes 2006 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com Member: NY Film Critics Online

As for America's being the least tolerant nation, how about
France's refusal to allow women wearing the veil to hold
jobs? And Tony Blair's blasting women who cover their
faces?

As for putting in my own patriotic feeling, the role of the
critic is a flexible one. The writer can travel far and wide
in commenting on a film.

Harvey

I have to assume that any "non-public figure" who appeared in this movie had to sign a release. If they were trashed, it was consensual. That some people took the character seriously, and so allowed him to realistically portray them as bigots or fools, then chose to permit its worldwide viewing, is more an indictment of the "victims" lack of self-awareness than of Cohen's mean-spiritedness.

  "I didn't realize that Borat's victims signed a release after seeing how they were trashed."

Hi Harvey, it seems some if not all of them signed before they were trashed. A report on the film in "Entertainment Weekly" addressed the issue in part of a four page article. A fair-use excerpt for critical and research purposes:

"The unwitting suspects... were handed release forms that were, if no technically bogus, at least ambiguous as to the filmmakers' true intent. 'I don't want to get into the whole process,' said [the studio co-chairman], 'but people knew in advance they were being taped, so they signed the appropriate document.' Asked if the release said 'Twentieth Century Fox' on them, he answers 'I don't know.'

Says [director Larry Charles]: 'I'd tell people, 'Right now this movie is only scheduled to be shown in Kazakhstan. I don't know what they're going to do with it. I'm just here to shoot it.' We were like the Merry Pranksters in a way. These people got dosed.'

One unsuspecting target... [said] 'We signed the releases without even reading them,' he admits. 'We have no idea what we signed.' After suffering through a long and excruciatingly awkward [incident]... [the target] says he and his fellow victims felt 'emotionally raped.' To his relief, the scene didn't make the final cut, and he has no intention to sue anyone over the prank: 'Why be made a fool of twice?' he says. Others may feel differently. Fox lawyers are no doubt standing by the phones."

--Don 

Don, I have no doubt that a major studio will do what it
has to do to release a major movie that would guarantee
big box office. Even if everyone signed a release, that
release would state, I believe, that a film company is
making a doc about the efforts of a Kazakh representative
to learn about American culture. The people who signed
the release but were clueless about what was about to happen
to them have been taken advantage of: humiliated despite, in
fact because of, their vulnerability and polite attitude.
Only a sadistic audience would find this humiliation riotous,
even funny, and my oh my, we do have a lot of people with
repressed anger in our society, eager to let it all out on
vulgar satire.

My principal criticism is that the movie is funny only in parts.
The reason it's not funny, however, brings in the arguments
above. Then again, I gave it a C+, not a D or an F, but that
moderate grade brought down a host of insults from people who
insist that I'm humorless. I wonder if those folks would
catch any humor in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest or Aristophanes' Lysistrata. True, people are being laughed at, but in the case of the Greek comic writer, those
are people in power. In the case of the persecuted Wilde,
they would likewise people those who are members of society.

Harvey

THE REAL PURPOSE OF “BORAT”

Some of you guys are young. You haven’t developed a healthy case of cynicism yet. This is why some of you are siding with the movie’s “good intentions.”

The purpose of “Borat” is not to make homophobes, anti-Semites and racists in the audience feel uncomfortable with their own depravity.

Nor is the purpose of “Borat” the reverse: to incite racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism among audience members who take the title character literally rather than as a target for audience ridicule.

“Borat” is released by a major commercial studio. The purpose of the movie is to make money for the studio and for the principal character, who will laugh his way to the bank even more than much the audience. The movie will make good money because a large segment of the audience will laugh–mostly WITH Borat rather than AT him, methinks, because he has the cojones, for example, to walk naked into a hotel lobby where conventioners are meeting. This was never done before in a regular, commercial movie. It’s original, but so what?

“Borat” is not a good satire. “Thank You for Smoking Is.” Why? Because “Thank You for Smoking” does not indulge in low, broad, vulgar, physical comedy. The dialogue is witty, the language cutting, the acting brilliant.

What’s more, the target of that film is not vulnerable people tricked into signing releases that they scarcely knew what they were agreeing to. “Borat” ridicules ordinary people: the elderly, kind owners of a Bed and Breakfast hotel; a teacher of table manners and a small group of diners, the wife of one made the object of a contemptuous statement (on her lack of sexiness); an antiques dealer; even an entire country of 15 million people which is hardly one of the Big Five powers in the world today, nor is it a member of the Axis of Evil. “Thank You for Smoking,” by contrast, takes on the powerful lobbies, the demons of corporate spin culture that influence our representatives so strongly. Going further, Aristophanes’s “Lysistrata” targets Greece’s macho men who lead the city-states into war. Jonathan Swift’s “A Tale of the Tub” hones in on religious extremism; his “A Modest Proposal” ridicules those who have contempt for the poor. These satirists all target the powerful. “Borat” targets a poor nation, and a bevy of people who are kind to him and did not suspect that they were to be the objects of ridicule. At no time, though, is Borat’s satiric knife sharpened by genuine wit. It is dulled by gross, inexcusable, and mostly unfunny slapstick, so broad that most of the audience will ignore the real targets of satire and have contempt for Borat’s