Nothing is sacred anymore.
Thank you, Borat.
The primary battle in the documented journey of British comic Sacha Cohen's innocently bungling and all-too-curious Kazakh TV journalist across the United States comes not with the real-life characters within his moviefilm, or even with his beleaguered, well-meaning producer trying futilely to keep him in line. It deals, rather, with the logical lengths to which Borat Sagdiyev can misunderstand his largely hospitable subjects, or be misunderstood by them.
The extent to which you appreciate Borat's escapades depends almost entirely on how much you buy into what he knows or doesn't know. Basically, this is the theatrical concept of "suspension of disbelief," the disregarding of a medium's limitations in the telling of a story. The only difference with Borat is that the violation of these self-imposed limitations (in this case, a chosen format purported to be a documentary) are completely avoidable, which may cause you to take pause with what is occurring.
The plot in Borat is itself of little or no consequence. Borat is commissioned by Kazakh officials to travel to New York City in an effort to create a film about American culture, which is derailed quickly when he becomes infatuated with Pamela Anderson after seeing a Baywatch rerun, and demands that the trip take them to California so that he may marry her.
Cue the hijinks. The long, gratuitous hijinks.
On his trip across the country, Borat attempts, very awkwardly, to assimilate himself into American culture. He goes to driving school, as well as a joke-telling course, in which he inadvertently one-ups the teacher himself. He interviews a group of feminists, who walk out on him, and he brings a prostitute as a guest to a formal dinner party being hosted by a pastor. He goes to a rodeo, where he sings the Kazakh national anthem to the tune of the "Star-Spangled Banner." He hitchhikes with a band of roving frat boys. It's a regular baptism by fire. And it persists.
Borat is the gangly merging of a road movie crossed with the Jackass franchise, with the late spirit of the once-indomitable Tom Green thrown in for good measure. If you have laughed heartily at the reckless, without-shame brand of comedy that was employed by either of those two, you will find Boratto be a laugh riot. The last thing that it is, is unfunny. Its laughs are long, its laughs are hard, and may often cause you to collapse into the aisle gasping for air. The sheer preposterousness of each successive segment is almost enough to carry the day on its own, but then, the unwieldy social commentary begins to crop up, and that's where the film's dual intentions begin to clash.
As a character, Borat is far from stupid, but thanks to his backwater, morally infastidious upbringing, he just doesn't understand. We get this right off, starting with the introduction of the townspeople in his Kazakhstani village, but Cohen proceeds to ride this impropriety into the ground. We're supposed to be sympathetically amused by his naive blundering, but lord, is it hard. His anti-Semitic sentiments elicit nervous laughs from us, the informed, first world viewer for the first time or two, but they rapidly become grating and unfunny. The sophomoric gags, which are predictably numerous, are rolled out in direct contrast with the film's genuine moments, like the Kazakhs' unexplained disdain for their neighbors in Uzbekistan. Even as it's still very funny, we never find out why.
Borat's verbal slip-up at a rodeo, mentioning Kazakhstan's support of President Bush's "War OF Terror" rather than his "War ON Terror," feels about four shades too cutesy, and a cheap shot that just couldn't be resisted. Having multiple camera angles to document kids' reactions to Borat's acquiring of a bear for protection in his ice cream truck belies the supposed "documentary" format. The film just wasn't amateurish enough to sell me on the setup; it felt like a talented humorist from a technologically and culturally established country making an approximation of what a Kazakhstani documentary about America might look like.
Those who truly appreciate the gags of a set like the crew from Jackass do so because they can value those guys' ability to just let something rip, logic and consequences be damned. With them, it's all or nothing, if you laugh, you laugh, and if you don't, you don't. The spectacle is all they have. What they do is not art. It's full-bore sensationalism for the sake of entertainment.
In Borat, Cohen attempts to have his cake and eat it too. He is great at spectacle, and great at art, but at what point does the spectacle render the art pointless? Before long, the film becomes insatiable. Cohen has no "stop" button, and it works to his benefit. The film is nowhere near highbrow. In fact, its raunch and its ability to put Borat in some seriously discomfiting and unlikely situations are its defining characteristics. So, why fight it? Sure, two naked men wrestling in their hotel room, bolting through the halls and crashing into a crowded conference room just because they don't know any better is bound to be funny, but to what end does it serve when you're trying to tell me that ignorance knows no one culture?
It is possible be funny and send a meaningful message, but with Borat, Sacha Cohen has proven single-handedly that you can be too funny and blow your artistic vision to smithereens. Bigoted, misinformed and oblivious to reality looks the same in Central Asia as it does in the southern United States. Thanks, Sacha, no shit. If you want to serve a side of substantial social critique with your nonstop barrage of unchecked non-sequiteurs, then take longer than 80 minutes. I paid nine bucks. I've got time to be wised up.
BORAT
Directed by: Larry Charles
Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Ken Davitian