“Borat!” is the most buzzed-about comedy since . . . actually, I can’t remember a movie that has had this much intense hype before its release.
“American Pie,” “South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut” and “Team America: World Police” all had the buzz, but when the president of a country is condemning you and culturally inept parents want to see your film, you should know you have a cultural phenomenon on your hands. But “Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” more than lives up to the hype: viewers may actually experience physical discomfort from laughing too hard.
Borat Sagdiyev (Sacha Baron Cohen of “Da Ali G Show”) is a well-known television personality in his native Kazakhstan (actually filmed in Romania); the former Soviet bloc nation comes off as an incestuous, impoverished hellhole. Borat earned fame covering national events such as the annual “Running of the Jew.” Now, the Kazakh government has sent Borat to the United States on a publicity/fact-finding trip to improve their country, the basis of the “documentary” that comes out today.
Arriving in New York with his miserly producer Azamat (Ken Davitian), Borat’s European traditions are no match for the fast and impersonal ways of the Big Apple. But as the intrepid reporter makes his way through the Deep South to California, his bigotry and foulness are almost matched by frat boys, rodeo patrons and savvy car salesmen. The episodic nature of the film makes it difficult to summarize: the vignettes and interviews are loosely arranged around a subplot by Borat to wed Pamela Anderson, gamely played by Anderson herself. But the individual scenes are so funny that it hardly matters, and director Larry Charles (HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm”) keeps a brisk pace throughout.
In real life, Borat’s distinct unintelligence, vulgarity, misogyny and racism have drawn criticism from Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, and Baron Cohen’s many befuddled interview subjects now claim the film’s producers deceived them into signing their release forms. The international uproar has only spurred more interest in the film. But Baron Cohen—Cambridge-educated and a devout Jew—is no dummy. His Swiftian tactics work wonders, as Borat exemplifies the very chauvinism Baron Cohen is calling out. The laughs stick because the bigotry seems to find such a ready home in our country. Here is a character who carries gypsy tears to ward off AIDS and drives cross-country instead of flying “in case the Jews repeat their attacks of 9/11.” But the fiction seems tame when Borat records a genial Texas cowboy openly calling for the hanging of gays.
People will inevitably try to place “Borat!” in the modern comedy canon with the works of Parker, Stone, Stewart and Colbert. Critics likened Stephen Colbert’s appearance at the Correspondents’ Dinner to the populist wit of Mark Twain, but Baron Cohen has done Colbert one better, keeping up his persona on an entire cross-country trip. Even at the most bizarre or dangerous moments, Baron Cohen never slips out of character, totally committed to getting the laugh. He gets plenty, but he also gets you to think, and that’s what makes “Borat!” the best and funniest comedy of the new century.
