They no like Borat

I suspect I'll get my ass kicked for this, but: please please PLEASE stop giving Armond White any more attention. Seriously. He stopped having anything worthwhile to say *years* ago.

I wonder...would the reviews be so positive if it weren't for the constantly mentioned fact that "Cohen is actually a social-liberal and a Jew...he doesn't actually believe this stuff!". What if this exact character was played by a protestant conservative?

I guess the question is...is a comedy act or movie really that great if you have to know numerous aspects about the performer's real life for the act to be funny? Or at the very least, not totally morally objectionable? Borat seems like the ultimate character for the Internet fan who obsesses about every aspect of an upcoming movie they want watch...but will the casual audience get it? Will they enjoy the movie for the wrong reasons?

I personally think Borat is hilarious...but then I'm in the small target audience he's aimed at.

Dear Kza:

Yes, I thought about referring to him the way I usually refer to A-- C------, because this seemed to be written in her desperate-cry-for-attention mode. But I decided it was better to use White's piece to provoke discussion, and ask some real questions, about the movie and the character of Borat.

Dear Nate:

Those are very good questions. I saw a few "Ali G Shows" on HBO, but I didn't know anything about Sacha Baron Cohen himself when I saw the movie for the firt time in Toronto in September. I'm sure knowing that he's Jewish (I still don't know anything about his political leanings) might take the edge off for some -- but what's important is how the movie itself gets its laughs. White hates the movie because he says it's smugly liberal. Is that the way it's going to play across the country? I don't know. I've already seen some comparisons to "Snakes on a Plane" (re: your Internet-obsession comment), but I don't know anybody who LOVED "SoaP" the way so many people who've already seen "Borat" love it. (One big difference: They didn't screen "SoaP" for anyone in advance; "Borat" has been screened for critics and word-of-mouth audiences continually since September.)

When a man cites Jiminy Glick and Green Acres as examples of well-crafted comedy, how seriously can he be taken?

As for the Running of the Jew, I wonder if it doesn't have more to do with our stereotypes of these nebulous foreign countries. What do we know about Kazakhstan? Have we ever been there? Is there ethnic unrest over there? Probably. They're a bunch of wogs. It's just like when Robert De Niro in Wag the Dog decided that we should go to war with Albania. Why Albania? Why not? You know anything about it? No. It's some country over there in Asia someplace, right? Might they have religious fundamentalists who would want to attack us with a primitive nuclear bomb? Sounds right to me.

*slight spoilers below*

I saw this a few nights ago with a Danish preview audience. Everyone seemed to really love it, but two sequences were accompanied by complete audience silence: Borat's conversation with the racist and homophobic rodeo guy, and his trip in the Winnebago with the fratboys.

It got me thinking: Are these scenes supposed to be funny? Should we be laughing at the rodeo guy's bigotry the way we laugh at Borat's? Maybe that was the entire point of the movie and I missed it, but I found the Winnebago and rodeo scenes embarrassing and a little depressing. Not just because they confirm all the idiot stereotypes about Americans I have to debate (and negate-by-example, hopefully) here every time I go to a dinner party. It just wasn't funny to me at all to see 'normal' Americans sounding like, well, Kazakhstanis.

What did you think, Jim? Did American and Canadian audiences laugh at those sequences?

Any excellent review. I'll let you know what I think when I've seen it on Saturday.

Of Borat, I've only seen clips and trailers on TV and his appearance on The Daily Show. I just didn't find it funny, as with the clips I've seen of Da Ali G Show. An actor who plays two "different" clueless TV personalities who hits the same note over and again with both of them doesn't strike me as worth my time.

I liked "Gerhard Reinke's Wanderlust," in which Josh Gardner played a German tourist, perhaps because it was more affectionate kidding than so very barbed. Additionally, even it if wasn't being particularly funny, there were also the exotic locations to enjoy.

I guess I get the comments critics are making about the supposed metahumor going on with Borat, that he's somehow smart, making people think about why they're laughing - but I'm not laughing, so.... I'm also afraid I suspect that the majority of the audience will be laughing in appreciation of the character's attitudes about women, Jews, etc., and won't be giving any thought to why they're laughing.

First let me say that this movie had me laughing to the point of tears so many different times that I cannot help but recommend it. It IS the comedy I've been waiting for, much sharper than anything from the major comedians in the last few years. I laughed at "The 40-year-old Virgin," but I positively howled during "Borat."
However. The movie is hilarious, not flawless. It falls apart at the end of its immensely short 82 minute running time, and each time the "plot" rears its ugly head, we can feel it being shoved by outside forces. As well, the naked-wrestling scene-- pardon me-- the very, VERY long naked wrestling scene was unamusing to me in the worst way. It felt like it belonged in a "Jackass" movie, not here. There are quite a few great moments and segments, and I know there were even more, I just don't know why they weren't in the movie. We know from the tailer that there is a sequence invovling a Civil War reinactment, but it's nowehre in the movie. You could say, technically, as well, that he is equally offensive to everyone, but his targets are mostly the right wing, some of which falls flat. Why are we given mere moments of his interview with feminists, but watch minute after minute of his dinner with the southern pastor and co? Who, by the way, treat him pretty nicely. As do the Christians who "save" him. You may disagree with their views, but what else is there to laugh at? The views expressed by the people at that church, to my memory, aren't offensive or racist, they are sincere.
Lastly, it would very much shed a new lgiht on things to know which moments were staged and which were spontaneous. Some you can tell, but others...not so much.
Still, its flaws don't prevent the other material from being some of the funniest stuff ever put on film, and oh man they are. Bring a tissue. You'll need it.

Jim,

thanks for the update on Armond White's rapidly deteriorating sanity. While his prose is truly a head-shaking wonder to behold, I find myself unable to handle it unfiltered.

Haven't seen the film yet (though just the descriptions made me laugh), but I'd like to point out to Nate that Cohen's been doing the Borat schtick for a long time now, and it wasn't until it came over this side of the pond that it became so politicized - not only in the silly, opportunistic rhetorical stands some are taking on it, but on the whole question of Cohen's religious and political background.

That background, as I see it, is both important and unimportant. First off, comic personae aren't simply transferable: Cohen's creation derives from his own feelings, beliefs, and talents, and since those are certainly influenced, if not determined by, his upbringing, it's highly unlikely that a "protestant conservative" comedian could ever conceive of this character.

On the other hand, the character wouldn't be as funny as he is if Cohen were always winking at us from behind the mask (or moustache) - letting us know that it's "safe" to laugh 'cause hey, he really doesn't believe this stuff. It's his complete absorption within the character that makes it work. Knowledge of the performer isn't necessary for the funny to take hold; as with any good comedian, the effect, not the origin, is the most important factor.

I don't think you need to know anything about Cohen for Borat to work. I remember 5 or 6 years ago when a friend of mine brought home a VHS from the UK of Ali G, Borat, etc. He explained nothing to me, and I thought Borat was a real reporter for at least 1/2 of the first report I saw him do. By the time it was over, I had to consider that this was a put-on because Borat's comments (on the surface dumb, after a second thought, quite incisive)revealed too much about the intervewees that they wouldn't normally give up. It was like lightbulb going off in my head when I realized it was the same actor portraying Ali G. But Borat was so much more "real," for some reason.

There is something to be said for the "fairness" of his decpetion. Jim- Like you said, his "victims" all know they are on camera, but their guard is let down because Borat makes their racist or misogynistic behavior seem "okay." It's like when Michael Moore was invited into Charlton Heston's house in "Bowling for Columbine." Heston probably thought from Moore's early comments that he had in his interviewer a sympathizer to his cause. He let his guard down, thinking that the interview would be shown in a pro-gun light. That's when Moore blindsided him.

Borat is so genius because its cloaked in this "innocent foreiegner" schtick, and that's why people let their guard down. When they find out its an act, they feel they were being tricked. Was Heston being tricked when he hung himself with his own stupid comments? No, and neither are the frat guys in "Borat." All they had to do was open their mouths.

Here's my full take: http://www.scene-stealers.com/index.php/base/print/borat_a_fearless_hilarious_high_wire_act/

I don't think Lane's review is as negative as you seem to think. On the other hand, I think others are reading it too positively (Metacritic interpreted it as an 80). Is Lane's conclusion - "His task is not so much to insult his fellow Jews, or the African-American community, as to register amazement at a culture that turns race relations into an article of faith—that seems to believe, against the run of history, in legislating our lower, more brutish instincts out of existence. In the mind of Sacha Baron Cohen, they are here to stay." - a compliment or a pan? It can be read both ways.

Do you ever send these articles to the people you are writing about? Are they at all aware of your objections? I would love to know if or how they would answer to you, especially when they make a rudimentary fallacy.

Personally, I don't find Borat funny or offensive.

Nothing is original about the movie, it’s the tried and true stock Hollywood innocent character that is a cross of
of Peter Sellers and Forrest Gump.
He makes fun of Jews, I don't find that funny or offensive, in the sense that he is not DOING anything to hurt Jews, just WORDS.

I get why people find this offensive and/or funny because now days if you say it, you are it, like Fox News saying Fair and Balanced or Bill Clinton saying he's for reducing inequality. Fox hires people from current White House and Bill Clinton rents out Central Park for his 60th B-DAY to hobnob with billionaires. Those are actions, telling you what they are really about. Not their words.

Borat came across as very silly, and reminded me of the kid at the pool this past summer, age 10, who would shout out: "Hey Mom, you still need to get a diaphragm for the weekend at the drug store on the way home!"

Sure, that produces a slight grin at the kids lack of knowledge, but having to be around that kid for 90 minutes, much like Borat, it just becomes boring.

All I'm offended by Cohen is that he is going to remake THE DINNER GAME, a really funny movie, and much better than Borat.

Funny in a "bad art" satirical way, indeed, very funny, but this film gets docked a couple stars automatically for use of "Kazakhstan". With prudes everywhere preoccupied with the potential Jewish defamation issues, have normal people not noticed that a ethnic group -- one that has suffered quite a bit under dictatorships -- is being used as a butt of jokes? Now THAT is what's childish and inconscionable about Borat. Any imaginary "-stan" would have been fine, but I think Cohen went for the extra publicity. Sad.

David Edelstein gave Borat an almost reluctant negative review, not for any of the reasons cited above, but because he found the type of humor made him squirm as the humiliation of the interview subjects unfolded on-screen. Funny stuff, he seemed to conclude, but "make uncomfortable."

What little I've seen of Ali G made me react the same way, as did the preview for Borat. I don't have any problem with the material, other than it makes me uncomfortable. Not the stuff that Borat says about women, Jews, his sister, Kazakhstan, etc. I'm not that sensitive. I saw the first several minutes on Youtube, and laughed. But that all took place in "Kazakhstan." Later in America, when he gets his interview subjects to say (or do, or sing) awful things, I can only laugh a kind of nervous laugh, ya know? I suspect I may react like Edelstein, admiring the effort, yet not being able to fully enjoy it.

Still, my curiosity may probably win out. It's now an "event" film as well, and I want to be in on the talk.

Does “Borat� celebrate or skewer bigotry? Yes. Sasha Baron Cohen – perhaps the next Peter Sellers – is a shrewd marketer, doubling his potential audience by doing both. And as with a slew of cynical Gen-X comedians, Sarah Silverman among them, he can always claim the high road of satiric irony when questioned. At least he’s funny. On “Da Ali G Show,� his jests were the sort where you squirmed a bit for the victim even while you were laughing and trying not to pee your pants. Liberal intellectuals will, of course, revere him, and conservative yokels will, of course, be empowered by his ridicule of foreigners and non-WASPs. It’s a win-win for everyone except those who -- like the outcast kid teased at school – suffer as the butt of his jokes. It all works if you're not that kid.

Jim, you're unquestionably an America-hating 13-year-old.

Just got back from the movie about 15 minutes ago. I have to say it's a win-win film in the sense that most of the audience (the place had a decent-sized crowd, and for a 10:40 AM show on a weekday!) laughed until they cried, and at least two people left before it finished. (These were the same people who showed up twenty minutes late, sat behind me, and kicked my chair, so -- I can't say I missed them.)

I think it's very telling that many claim the Borat character (and Cohen) pick on conservative ideologies. As far as I can tell, when Borat interviews people not in on the joke, he says very little -- anyone who hangs on screen is hanging themselves, pure and simple. The shockingly racist rodeo conductor talks and talks and talks, and Borat only registers confusion; he also barely speaks. The comedy of Borat is not in being mean to people (as in Punk'd, or various prank caller outfits), but in teasing out behavior in people that they usually keep contained and subdued. He's a social anarchist.

I hvae not seen "Borat" yet, but I'm glad you mention Armond White's review of it (which I also read). White has been the great elephant in the room of film criticism for at least the past five years, and he gets more baffling with each passing week. He would not be such a maddening problem if he were just a straight-up blowhard, rather than an obviously intelligent reviewer who occasionally dazzles us with his command of film history and his application of certain moral and aesthetic standards to viewing a film. (His recent review of "The Departed", for example, was spot-on in my opinion and got to the heart of my concern that Martin Scorsese is catering to the Tarantino-esque side of his talent rather than to the compassionate side).

Regarding White's review of "Borat", I don't believe that White is sayign what he said merely to be provocative. But it does demonstrate the close-mindedness and (dare I say) paranoia that have crept into White's writing in recent years. To White, the entire critical community is made up of elitist liberals who look down their nose at working-class middle-Americans. Occasionally, I think White makes interesting points about the ways in which critics can praise a film without realizing that it caters to their own sense of social superiority (i.e. "Lost in Translation", "The Squid in the Whale"). But more often that not, White comes off as a lunatic ranting about the "hipsters" who are out to destroy film culture.

I don't think that admitting to enjoying Jiminy Glick or "Talladega Nights" makes White's opinion any less credible (I happen to love Jiminy Glick, and think he brilliantly displays to the phoniness of celebrity interviewing). Nor should White be chastised for not finding "Borat" funny. The problem is that, as you said, he adopts a "you're-with-us-or-against-us" attitude in his writing that is off-putting. Sometimes a film is worth making dogmatic statements about, but White seems to do it almost every week (as when he perplexingly said that "only a moral idiot" could not see the political relevance of...wait for it..."Sahara"!).

White continues to fascinate me as a film critic (I rush to the nypress website every Wednesday), if only because I never know what to expect...the man who can beautifully trumpet the virtues of great films (like "Munich", "A Prairie Home Companion" and "The Rules of the Game"), or the man who takes his admirably contentious nature and twists it into the paranoid rants of someone fighting an imaginary battle with "hipster" critics everywhere. He's also a fascinating read because I can never quite get a handle on his politics...he seems to hold liberal ideals, but consistently attacks what he views as the elitist Left, and seems extremely defensive any time a film criticizes President Bush.

I still believe that White is one of the current treasures of film criticism, someone who is capable of bringing real insight to the moviewatching process, but also someone who makes insulting, close-minded provocations that seem to demonstrate the very elitism that White is so dead-set against. At the very least, White's proclamations on films like "Borat" give the rest of us an opportunity to examine why we so thoroughly disagree with him.

Bob: I often couldn't watch "Da Ali G Show" for the reasons you describe. I didn't quite see the comic point of these extended interviews where Ali asked stupid question after stupid question. Made me very uncomfortable. (I can't listen to talk radio for the same reason; there, NOBODY's in on the "joke," including the host.) But for some reason -- and I think it has to do with the fictional narrative, sketchy as it is -- I didn't feel quite so squirmy at "Borat." Still, it's definitely designed to make the audience squirm, and the two audiences I've seen it with got very quiet during the frat boy and rodeo redneck scenes, in which the "victims" were simply given enough screen time to hang themselves.

Steve: I think you're right that Borat (and Sacha Baron Cohen) are shrewdly playing both sides to some extent. But I think, in every case, it's Borat's bigotry and ignorace themselves that are the butt of the joke, not the OBJECTS of Borat's bigotry and ignorance. To me, Borat seems like the "outcast kid teased at school" -- only, in the film, because he's a foreigner, the would-be bullies humor him (at least until he pushes things too far and they realize he's been bullying THEM).

Great excerpt from Manohla Dargis's review in today's NY Times:

... some people are definitely not in on the joke, though only because some people are too stupid and too racist to understand that the joke is on them. As the 19th-century German thinker August Bebel observed, anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools, a truism Mr. Baron Cohen has embraced with a vengeance.

Given this, it seems instructive to note how discussions of Borat, including the sympathetic and the suspicious, often circle over to the issue of Mr. Baron Cohen’s own identity. Commentators often imply that Borat wouldn’t be funny if Mr. Baron Cohen were not Jewish, which is kind of like saying that Dave Chappelle wouldn’t be funny if he were not black. For these performers, the existential and material givens of growing up as a Jew in Britain and as a black man in America provide not only an apparently limitless source of fertile comic material, but they are also inseparable from their humor.

I'd like to thank Alex Murillo for his ample and stellar defense of White's place in the critical community. I, for one, love the man's writing and provocations, even though I do concede he's a bit nuts--and his Borat review is more than a bit off-putting. But that makes him much more interesting (and also insightful... that guy may say crazy things, but often they can be very truthful things) than your Gleibermans and Berardenellis. Plus, any defender of De Palma, Altman, Neil Jordan, and Walter Hill is alright in my book.

I'd also like to point out that much of the time, Borat gets his "victims" to fill out the release forms PRIOR to interviewing them. So that release forms argument is hardly a valid justification.

I'd like to thank Alex for his great post, too. Particularly this: "At the very least, White's proclamations on films like "Borat" give the rest of us an opportunity to examine why we so thoroughly disagree with him."

A polemicist or provocateur can be of value if he/she helps you sharpen and examine your own opinions. In the final analysis, I don't think whether one "agrees" or "disagrees" with a critic on a particular movie is the most important thing. Much more important is the quality of the critic's reasoning and the aesthetic values expressed in his/her prose. As I've often said, the least interesting thing about a critic is his/her "verdict." And as I hope I made clear in my post, I think there are criticisms and objections to be made in regard to "Borat" (even if I don't share them, or give them comparable weight) -- and some people here are getting at them. For the reasons I delineated, I think White's review of "Borat" was almost entirely about White, and very little about "Borat." Let's just recognize it for what it is.

BTW, My favorite thing about Jiminy Glick was Michael McKean. I didn't mean to sound so harsh (I would have been much harsher on Short's gushy real talk show, which had already been pre-parodied on SCTV's "Sammy Maudlin Show") -- just wanted to point out that what "Borat" is doing is something quite different from a simple talk-show parody. Oh, and if you can get ahold of a copy of Martin Short's 1989 HBO special "I, Martin Short, Goes Hollywood," it's genius from beginning to end. Particularly the celeb-spotting scenes at Citrus with Short as Troy Soren and Christopher Guest as Antoninus DiMentabella (close relation to Corky St. Clair).

The point about 'Borat' for me is not the racist, sexist, or otherwise 'rude' jokes. I love a good laugh, especially at the expense of the Thought Police's sanctimonious PC twaddle. I found 'Borat' mildly amusing, but simply cannot for the life of me understand the accolades this movie is getting as 'the funniest movie in years'. It's not. Perhaps the over-ratedness and hem-kissing and genuflecting we see toward 'Borat' are merely over-compensations, to show audience approval of an otherwise 'naughty' and forbidden movie? Perhaps all those '10' ratings on IMDb, and here, are reflexive actions against the opprobrium of the Chruistian Right and other PC Nazis in the US and the UK? Fair enough.

The humor 'Borat' often uses is the Candid Camera type--- preying on the naivete and innocence and basic good natures of ordinary shlubs, ordinary, low-class rednecks and working folks. Sure, their lives are drab and crappy. But is it entirely sporting to mock them and entrap them in ridicule and jokes they do not understand? As the late, great Eudora Welty said, comedy satire is rightly employed by the weak against the powerful. Here, it is wrongly applied by the powerful (a crew with cameras and microphones) and against the weak. That isn't satire, it's meanness. It also isn't very funny. The sister-sex jokes were funny; the mangled English was funny. Much was funny! But much was only mean spirited and therefore a bit ugly.

Jim: Hey, thanks for the reply. While I generally believe Cohen is taking more shots at bigotry than not, I do among other things find it uncomfortable that he must adopt an ethnic identity other than his own to do so. It's akin to blackface, and, in the process of lampooning bigotry, I wonder how many negative stereotypes he is reinforcing at others' expense. A lot of audiences will see a noble purpose in this, but as with Archie Bunker 30 years ago, some people may view Borat as an exemplar rather than a foil. Regardless, the film should rake in a lot of dollars. (Think any of it will benefit Kazakhstan?)

There's an interesting article up on the Onion AV Club's blog by the Noel Murray. After praising the film for its comedy, he goes on to say

What Borat is not is pointedly satirical. Listen hard enough to people who love the movie and they’ll have you believing that Borat’s journey through the American south exposes the racism and misogyny that bubbles just below the surface; and as someone who’s lived in the south all my life—and has known more than a few racists—I can tell you that Borat doesn’t really get it.

It's a thought-provoking take, and worth the read. I haven't seen the film yet, so I can't speak to whether or not I agree with him, but he does make some interesting points about the way candid-camera-style comedy can catch people acting more out of confusion than conviction.

Borat was a funny film, but it wasn't THAT funny. There is so much of the film that is obviously scripted compared to how much isn't as well as plenty of material that just doesn't work. It's the funniest film of '06 but that isn't saying much

I really really loved Borat, and I also kind of hated it. On one hand, the film is a brilliant piece of comedy. The structure of the film is great, and the character is genius. Cohen is expert, especially in his improv. They paid off everything they set up (including the bear). My favorite bit was the Charlie Chaplin thing. In short: I got it. I laughed. Freaking hilarious. Genius.

But on the other hand, I felt really bad for the people in the film. It was unclear to me whether the people were actually as represented or were just kind people humoring a stranger; indeed, I wondered how much editing went into each bit to portray each person as a stupid redneck. In this regard, I am particularly troubled by those who would take the bits with, for example, the gun dealer as evidence of the ignorance of people in the middle of the country. My fear is that this is actually Cohen's intent: to demonstrate how stupid and racist southerners and midwesterners are - a remarkably prejudiced approach to social relevance. If that is indeed the case, then Borat is a work of comic genius but a fairly ordinary addition into the unfortunately growing catalog of pompous, pejorative films (see, e.g., Crash, Talladega Nights, Syriana) that can't be bothered to truly understand people they don't know but presume they won't like.

Oh yeah, and I meant to add: the film is really mean-spirited, if that's his point. But if he's just trying to be funny, then I say: well done.

He's just doing a wonderful job of entrapment. He infiltrates, plays along, and draws out the true nature of anyone near him. At least, he shows us those takes that work out that way. Can't see anything wrong with that.

By the way, I cracked the Borat code:
http://extrapolater.wordpress.com/2006/11/03/how-to-speak-borat/

I think what's most depressing about this is that people are "schocked" to learn how racist and homophobic this country is. To say that pointing out how awful Americans can be is groundbreaking is sort of like making a film about how we can't breathe under water.

I'm not offended by this movie, I just think it's a sad commentary on our culture that it takes a movie for some people to realize how ugly people can be to each other.

If one compares Borat with another comedian, it;s not the lame Glick (Sorry, Martin, but you haven't been funny in ages), but Stephen Colbert. It's the same subtle going in the persona representing that which you make fun of - in Borat's case, prejudice, bigotry, stupidity.
I haven't seen the movie just yet (I plan to go), but having seel the complete Ali G shows on HBO I know what I am talking about.
Also, thank you for a well written review - I was floored that Roeper gave it thumbs down (but then he did so for Flushed Away which proves that he's humor impaired).
How fascinating on the show that Mario Van Peebles got Borat, but Roeper missed the point entirely!
And I completely agree with your points on the Anti-Defamation League objections. They seem to attack all the wrong targets nowadays, don't they? Almost as if they are shilling for someone else, non?

"It got me thinking: Are these scenes supposed to be funny? Should we be laughing at the rodeo guy's bigotry the way we laugh at Borat's? Maybe that was the entire point of the movie and I missed it, but I found the Winnebago and rodeo scenes embarrassing and a little depressing. Not just because they confirm all the idiot stereotypes about Americans I have to debate (and negate-by-example, hopefully) here every time I go to a dinner party."

When I saw it (in Canada), people were laughing in the theatre at those scenes, but there were a lot of gasps. It was more sort of a "gotcha" moment; people were laughing at the frat boys and the rodeo guy, not with them. It was more like "I can't believe people would really say that, and sign a release."

I agree wholeheartedly that it's important to understand that Cohen does not approach all his subjects in the same way, or rather that the subjects aren't "revealed" in the same way. I never thought he was mocking the black kids in Atlanta, for example, or the prostitute or even the Pentacostals (I found them quite charming, except maybe for the insistence on the U.S. being a Christian nation).

One of my favourite scenes has nothing to do with ridicule, but pure physical comedy: the scene on the local news set where he stands up out of camera view, and later tries to talk to the weatherman. Very funny.

One thing that I've noticed hasn't been said is that Borat forever skewers the notion of the cuddly "naive" foreigner made so popular in the 80s by movies like Moscow On The Hudson or TV shows like Perfect Strangers. These were essentially a cold war propaganda tool, which suggested that all eastern Europeans were at heart good people who just needed a taste of American-style freedom to save them. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, we expected Eastern Europe to be more enlightened due to the "gift" of capitalism. Instead, it's resulted in even more corruption and repression. The "New Europe" praised by Donald Rumsfeld is just as brutal as it was under the Soviets. (Borat was not kidding about Uzbekistan).

I HATED the movie, and I laughed all through it. Interestingly, despite it is humorous, it is degrading. I hated it because it's low-grade humor: bodily function, bathroom humor; bigotry; shock-jock-type of appeal. It is reminiscent of Andrew Dice Clay and Howard Stern. It's cheap. We, as a society, can do much better, and we have in the past.

I can appreciate the skill used in compiling the film for what it is, but the degrading status yet remains.

There are higher forms of humor, more appropriate for humankind.

Someone said it better than I can: "A culture is only as great as its dreams, and its dreams are dreamed by artists. When the level of existence of the artist becomes impure, so becomes impure the art itself to the deterioration of the society."

3 inconsistent points
1. anthony lane's review of borat is very positive as far i could tell. he compares cohen to lenny bruce and, going a bit overboard it seems to me, sees the humor as about, not simply race, but the human condition as such.
2. as i think most people have caught on, armond white forfeits his position as "interesting provocateur" by being so obviously motivated by resentment. he likes to claim that critics live in their own bourgeois worlds but what critic is more obviously writing only for the sake of other critics than armond white? how many people know for example that his viscous attack on the films of noah baumbach is entirely motivated by an old feud with baumbach's mother, georgia brown, ex-critic of the village voice?
3. this'll sound a bit ironic after what i've just written but white's predictable review of "borat" actually has a point i agree with. how is it that a movie that is so "controversial" and "subversive" in its political implications is both hugely popular commercially and universally loved by film critics? and why do so few people talk about the ambiguous muslim heritage of both borat and ali g that makes the humor consistent with current racist attitudes in the u.s.?

Jim said: I've already seen some comparisons to "Snakes on a Plane" (re: your Internet-obsession comment), but I don't know anybody who LOVED "SoaP" the way so many people who've already seen "Borat" love it.

One similarity I can see between those two films is that people are going to see them based on their appreciation for a character they already know. Borat has already been seen in the U.S. by HBO subcribers, and people who went to see SoaP were drawn by the delicious proposition of seeing Samuel L. Jackson play himself and react to a plane full of snakes. He's almost become a caricature of himself - witness the internet driven insertion of the word 'motherf#@er' in a climactic scene. That's part of the character we want to see Sam Jackson play every time out now.

One thing I kept thinking while watching Borat was: I'd be more surprised how racist the country was if I hadn't played Halo 2 online.

So when you play Halo online, there's a voice chat feature that you can use to coordinate with teammates or smacktalk your opponents.. and it's kind of appalling how many people will talk about how someone "got Jewed" or set their icon to look like a Klan member.

It's kind of amazing how online gaming lets you play with people all over the country and even around the world, and it's doubly interesting how it gives you a view of some people who'd probably never talk to you like this in real life.

I suppose Borat and Halo are similar in that they both give these people an excuse to express themselves in a way that they normally would not to the public.

I agree with a lot of what has been said here, especially in the degree that I thought the movie was hilarious though I can't say it was the "funniest film of all time." As brilliant as a lot of it was, so much of the humor seemed to take the cheap and easy way out.

*spoilers*

Actually, one of the things that surprised me about the film was just how little the "ugly American" was shown in comparison to all the hype I had seen beforehand. I was prepared for a devastating satire of American attitudes, though really aside from the cowboy, the drunk frat guys, and the rude subway goers (who did more to live up to already existing stereotypes than anything else), it seemed to be a more a matter of Americans standing around while Borat did more and more to offend just to get a reaction. Were the rodeo people really racist for applauding the "war of terror" remark, when it's pretty clear most of them figured he meant "war on terror?" Was the gun dealer an anti-Semite because Borat wanted a gun to shoot Jews with? If anything, most of the people in the film took the passive approach, just letting him say his peace, while looking all the annoyed and impatient, certainly not a value most countries see us as having. If anything, the characters that stuck with me were the kind Jewish couple at the B&B and how worried I was that Borat was going to end up humiliating them too. And actually it was their scene where I began to wonder about the film in general.

In a sense, too many of the reactions in this film were too perfect, too many of the shots were a little too perfect, too many of the little moments were a little too perfect. And I think the thing that is bothering me about the film is this: Is Cohen treating us the audience as he did his subjects? I'm reminded of the Broadcast News sequence where William Hurt makes himself cry to make his story perfect, and I just saw way too many similar moments that have made me question whether this really is how America looks or how Cohen wanted it to look.

*spoilers*

It's pretty obvious the elderly couple was asked to get a sandwich beforehand for the "poisoning," it's pretty obvious the bear freaking out the children scene were shot one shot at a time, the absence of good lighting while Borat gets thrown out of the dinner party only emphasizes how set-up the bathroom tutorial was earlier what with it's perfect lighting, and as much as I believe that those really were the frat boys' view on life, I still question why they would say that publicly when the RV clearly was professionally lit with more than one cameraman on board aside from Borat. And how does Cohen singing at a rodeo make national news yet his "abduction" of Pamela Anderson or his naked interruption of a business meeting not? You'd think some of these scenes would have been all over Access Hollywood.

I only mention this because it becomes a different film to me if more of this was scripted than insinuated, because while the film is not being pushed as a documentary, so many of the key scenes that have audiences buzzing are scenes that are suggested as being authentic. And once I question the validity of one "legit" scene, I end up questioning the entire film. I only ask, who really is getting the last laugh on this film: the intelligent moviegoing public or Sasha Cohen?

I refuse to see this movie because I am, quite simply, already sick to death of it. It's been on the movie sites for several months now, the ads have been going for over three weeks, we get news stories about Cohen showing up in character at the Kazakh embassy, we have Borat interviewed on every single site that's ever been linked by the IMDB *and* conducting interviews on every channel with a passing connection to and/or faint desire to be like MTV, and every single damn message board on the web has a thread entitled "BORAT: FUNNIEST MOVIE OF THE DECADE?!?" or some such ridiculous hyperbole. Why do I need to go to a theater? I've already seen the damn thing through every other media outlet.

As for the subject matter, most of the laughs come from Cohen's willingness to say ethnic slurs and express racist/sexist/anti-Semitic viewpoints out loud. In other words, it's the adult equivalent of saying "poop" in a kindergarten classroom. I got past that brand of humor before I hit elementary school, thanks. "Ah! But the reactions!" you say. I'm with Sydney Brown; his victims are silent not out of agreement but out of a misguided idea of what's polite - or, simply, out of being stunned. The reactions are the eqwivalent of an unending series of awkward pauses in conversation, and just as funny.

It's sad what passes for bravery these days.

In response to the folks who asked if we're supposed to find the frat boys and the homicidally racist rodeo fan funny: I don't think we are, but I do think we're supposed to laugh at them, in a mean way, and I think that's a good thing. P.C. doesn't work on those mindsets (remember, the frat boys are probably attending mandatory sensitivity training of some kind as part of their Greek system) nor does empathy. Ridicule, however, isolates them very effectively.

I'm always surprised/amused/amazed when someone says "I will not see this movie" and then proceeds to analyze its content, methodology, and relative value to the world of film. Critics of America: it turns out we don't need you anymore. We have psychics willing to do the job for you.

I think it's damn fascinating everyone keeps focusing on the poor Southerners and midwestern types. As one commenter pointed out above, it's the New Yorkers who go the furthest toward supporting stereotypes of their culture, and Borat is ruder to the NYC feminist group than he is to anyone in the South; what happens on the two coasts takes up half the damn movie. This is a tour of America, not an indictment of the South.

I'm not really interested in who was scripted and who wasn't. I'm not particularly surprised that racist people still exist (the only surprising thing about them is they continue to think it's okay to vocalize such abhorrent attitudes). The humor in Borat is like that Danny DeVito "that's why they call it money" line in David Mamet's Heist: you either get it or you don't. It's not a statement of elitism, just a difference in taste. If you don't think it's funny, that's fine; just don't tell me my basically nonstop laughing was somehow invalid.

Funniest movie of the decade? No, but certainly of 2006.

First things first, this is a great, informed and fully reasoned discussion that is going here and I would personally like to give a tip of the hat to all the participants as well as Mr Emerson, It is rare in this day and age to read such a civil discourse on pop culture. But enough of my gratitude and now for more discourse.
Although I fully respect the opinions of Borat's / Cohen's followers I can't seem to understand / agree with their view point. It's not that I find Borat offensive (anyone who is offended by a joke must surely live in a cave for if a joke sets them off then I can't imagine what all of the sick, sadistic and twisted things human beings do to each other every day must do to them) That being said, my problem with Borat and really Mr. Cohen's humour in general is that I find it easy and by easy what I mean is that it, in my opinion, doesn't take a great amount of talent or wit to make fun of a 3rd world / former Soviet Block country located anomously somewhere in central Asia that most Westerners have never heard of and by default thus assume is backwards. Neither does it take much skill to poke fun at red state republicans nor idiot frat boys. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I feel that Mr. Cohen is if anything highly skilled at the fine art of shooting fish in a barrel, and although there is absolutely nothing wrong with that let's not crown the man the next Lenny Bruce / Andy Kauffmann quite yet. Ultimately, I guess I find Borat to be a one joke trick played out over roughly 2 hours as opposed to my generations Blazing Saddles. Any five year old could come up with this stuff and although I give the man credit for being able stay so thoroughly in character while saying and doing the most absurd of things I can't help but feel that if this is all it takes to be crowned a comedic genius then the state comedy really is worse than I originally had believed. In closing I was wondering if anybody here remembers all the hoopla and and praise that was lavished upon another "comedic genius" and supposed heir to Andy Kauffmann's thrown about five or six years back, I speak of course of Tom Green. Of "the Bum-Bum Song" fame... I remember all the talk of how he was an "absurdist genius"... I wonder what exactly he's up to? All I'm saying is laugh at his jokes all you want but please remember true Genius, lasts longer than 15 minutes!

"Most of the laughs come from Cohen's willingness to say ethnic slurs and express racist/sexist/anti-Semitic viewpoints out loud."
Um, how can you say that when you haven't seen it?
I saw it last night; while it didn't unseat This Is Spinal Tap for funniest movie of all time, the naked wrestling scene did unseat Stonehenge for funniest scene. People say this all the time, but I literally couldn't breathe. And just when I thought my head was above water, they burst into the conference room. I really needed the scene afterward showing a sad, dejected Borat for some relief.
On a side note, I don't understand all the talk of what was staged and what wasn't. It's not a documentary, it's a comedy. I just care about what was funny, and God was this funny.

We have psychics willing to do the job for you.

One doesn't need psychic abilities when, as I already mentioned, the entire film is screened for you - indeed, shoved in one's face - on every media outlet available. The source of comedic tension (ostensibly slow-witted interviewer asks offensive and clueless questions) is the same as in "Da Ali G Show"; Cohen just adds a few more slurs and a different accent.

We don't need psychic abilities in our debate, then. Reading comprehension skills, on the other hand, would most definitely be helpful.

I think knowing if some of the scenes were staged or not matters to an extent (for the record, I would recommend Borat as a film - don't think it's one of the all-time great comedies, but worthwhile). It matters b/c if certain scenes were scripted (and some unquestionably were), then the entire film is a variant of awkward moment humor that Ricky Gervais utilized so well in The Office. However, if some scenes were real (like, say, the dinner scene and the antique store scene), then it changes the way I view those scenes. If it really happened, he was humiliating/embarrassing people just for the sake of doing it, which strikes me as simply mean-spirited. Some people in the film I don't feel sorry for (the rodeo organizer being the most obvious), but...knowing whether or not some of the other scenes were scripted would matter to me. While I laughed at a lot in the film, I didn't laugh at antique store and dinner party scenes (and a few others), because I thought they were real and I found it mean-spirited. If I knew it was all scripted, I'd be more likely to laugh...This may be a weak analogy, but...I can watch and enjoy well-staged car chases/crashes on film, but if I see one on the news or reality TV, it makes me feel uncomfortable because I know it actually happened.

On the South debate, I am a Southerner and I didn't view the film as an attack on the South, but for the sake of argument, I will dispute Ken Lowery's point about Borat being rudest to the feminists in NYC. I would say he's far ruder to the people at the dinner party (he did not show any of the feminists a bag of his poop) and the people at the antique store (he didn't destroy large amounts of the feminists' property, either).

I find it hard to even watch the interviews on "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" for the simple reason that I get really, really squirmy and uncomfortable on behalf of the interviewees (even when I want Stewart or Colbert to demolish them). But then, as a kid, I was so neurotic I could barely watch "I Love Lucy" (and rarely found it funny) because I my apprehension about Lucy's screw-ups were excruciating.

So, I was even a little disappointed when I saw the "Borat" trailer and learned it was going to use the fake interview approach. Sure, I squirmed and got embarrassed during the movie (and even found it hard to laugh sometimes -- but mostly when the interviewees, like the frat boys and the rodeo redneck, were being awful beyond Borat himself, and it didn't seem to be a put-on). As I said in my review, I don't know the off-camera circumstances of all these encounters -- how many were "ambushes" and how many were with actors -- but somehow the fictional narrative framework and rapid pacing of the movie kept it moving along (I never felt inescapably stuck in a scene) and made it work for me.

To Rebecca:

"One doesn't need psychic abilities when, as I already mentioned, the entire film is screened for you - indeed, shoved in one's face - on every media outlet available."

Comprehended. What baffles me is that having the basic formula down somehow translates to knowing every iteration and nuance presented in a movie you haven't actually seen.

For instance, I'm familiar with Trey Parker and Matt Stone's "style" in South Park, which means I can guess the broad strokes of some (but not all) of their shows... but because they are talented and creative individuals, they do still manage to surprise, evolve, and grow. Otherwise everyone would have tuned out years ago.

And though I'm new to Cohen, from what I've seen of his works done before Borat since seeing that movie, he is also growing, evolving, and changing.

A film's hype is not the same as its content, and I don't think exposure to one makes someone an expert on the other.

To Fritz:

I will dispute Ken Lowery's point about Borat being rudest to the feminists in NYC. I would say he's far ruder to the people at the dinner party (he did not show any of the feminists a bag of his poop) and the people at the antique store (he didn't destroy large amounts of the feminists' property, either).

I'd dispute that due to his presentation. He was actively rude to the feminists, but in the two instances you cite was ignorant of his crime (or in the case of bringing his "guest," just misunderstanding what was considered acceptable) or was a simple bumbler, respectively. Granted, this may be a fine line, but if we're discussing the relative meanness of Borat and Cohen, presentation and character intent matters.

I'm an American and, therefore, know next to nothing about Kazakhstan but somehow I got the feeling that Borat wasn't making fun of that country so much as depicting it (and his own character)
in the cartoonish way in which the people he meets might imagine it. The "running of the Jew" scenes were meant to allow American bigots to say "See, that's what anti-semitism is." I think there was only one target in this movie and that was Americans: fat Americans, skinny Americans, Southern Americans, New York Americans, etc., etc. Hence, I found it hilarious, because whenever I try to picture this country through the eyes of the rest of the world (Kazakhstan or England) I find us quite hilarious, too, and extraordinarily scary. But ignorance is bliss.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but on a completely unrelated note, I'm wearing pants.

Well, I saw it, and I rather regret it.

My opinions have already been voiced in part by others, but I'll just state that the funny parts occurred when he gave others some rope, and they hung themselves -the frat guys and the rodeo guy. Everything else seemed juvenile, or obnoxious potty humor, where the subject of the interview or host was being gracious to a strange guest, and they got a bag of sh*& in return. Nothing funny to me about that.

Also, I have to wonder about the release that Pamela Anderson signed. She was assaulted in this movie - did she really sign a release for that? I say it was staged, but she's not that good of an actress. How did Cohen avoid prosecution for that?

A film's hype is not the same as its content

But the content *is* everywhere. That's part of my complaint; this isn't "normal" hype. It's the equivalent of every grandparent in the country wanting to show you the same set of baby pictures.

As for extrapolating a few sentences on the movie's comedic style into intent to position oneself as the High Holy Grand Master on the movie - I now understand how you can so easily spin the breathless hyperbole of previous posts.

Jim-

I can totally relate to your post about squirming. I have never been able to fully embrace the cringe-worthy school of comedy. I have too much empathy for the victim, even if it's a fictional character.

I guess that's OK, since having empathy with fictional characters is what makes them worth the investment of my time in the first place.

One more observation about the movie. Many folks, including Jim, point to the "Throw the Jew down the Well" sing-along as proof of the movie's redeeming value. The audience's reactions illustrate the Stanley Milgram experiments, they say. We're not laughing at slurs and stereotypes at face value, really; the movie's a social experiment, enjoyed for what it reveals about us.

From the movie's standpoint, though, here's the thing - what if the audience hadn't laughed? What if they sat stone-faced, refusing to sing, or actually began to turn on Borat?

I think we'd find our answer in Sarah Silverman's stand-up, with audience members bawling her out when she sweetly asserts that, say, Mexicans smell bad. Her critics are viewed as squares; not in on the joke, stupid for taking it as face value. She's just playing a character; don't they get it? How can they object?

In other words, in the "squirm comedy" (as New York magazine puts it) that plays with racism & other -isms, unless they come up with a witty retort on the spot, the victims are screwed. (I also might note that Cohen and Silverman insulate themselves against the possibility of retorts with the sweet-and-naive character gimmick; people are reluctant to chastise them, as they're supposedly too dumb to know what they're saying.) Had the audience revolted? Those stupid rednecks, not getting a meta joke when they see one; they should've played along with this bleeding-edge comedy! The audience sings along? Those stupid rednecks, so racist; boy, am I comforted that my previous convictions about them were affirmed! The moviemakers know they're playing a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't scenario from the get-go. If they disapprove, they must've been too backward to get it, and if they go along, we just knew they'd be so backward that they'd all agree with whatever horrible view the jokester is expressing. The comedian relies on the audience holding certain facile prejudices and stereotypes and interpreting the scenario through them.

In other words, you're *not* laughing for any higher or more intellectual reason. The comedy does rely on and encourage racism and the worst in us; it just has an extraordinarily roundabout delivery. Everyone laughing is singing his or her own version of "Throw the Jew down the Well"; they just have a more acceptable target.

As for extrapolating a few sentences on the movie's comedic style into intent to position oneself as the High Holy Grand Master on the movie - I now understand how you can so easily spin the breathless hyperbole of previous posts.

I've searched the thread for evidence of my breathless hyperbole, and I'm just not seeing it.

Your "few sentences" on the comedic style of the film included judgement on exactly what type of comedy was being displayed, how it was done, and its relative value as it pertains to comedy and bravery. I'm not really extrapolating anything; you have judged a film's method and worth (both immediate and in the grand scheme of comedy filmmaking) without actually observing it. It's as simple as that.

Interviews, press kits, reviews, previous uses of the character, or "sneak peek" clips are simply not a replacement for actually viewing the final product in a theatre or your living room. No ethical paper in this country would accept "hype exposure" as enough grounds for a critic to review a film. They still have to go see it. Because who knows? Maybe those 4-minute clips don't show the nuance created over a film's running time.

It's perfectly cool to avoid a movie because you're certain it won't meet your tastes. (God knows I haven't seen an Adam Sandler movie or watched an episode of Family Guy in years, for very specific reasons.) But when enough intelligent people think highly of something, I can't just dismiss their opinions and make comparisons to kindergartners saying "poop" without giving them the benefit of the doubt and experiencing the film myself.

What are all of you going ON and ON and ON about? The film is funny as hell (the first half, anyway -- the second is not quite as funny). End of story. Why ruin it by trying to dissect it?

Perhaps everyone here remembers my embarrassingly ignorant comments about Borat based on the first half of a YouTube video with Borat in it. I can only say, having seen the movie, that it's one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time, but one scene in particular (the Confederate antique shop scene) bothered me, because no matter how horrible the owner was (and obviously stupid enough to sign a release), the scene where Borat gives him $180 just couldn't help but make me feel unclean as though the audience was supposed to laugh at the fact that the owner could take Borat's mishaps seriously at all. Laughing at the scene only can create a "means justify the ends" quality. I stand by by old words on Arrested Development however.

Dear Charles:

In answer to your question: Because this is a movie criticism web site! Anybody can laugh, or say a movie is "funny" and leave it at that. We know what time it is; we are driven by a need to take the watch apart and figure out what makes it tick. As I said in my "Borat" review: "Since I am determined not to spoil the movie for you by recounting any more of the gags, perhaps I can ruin it -- er, enhance your enjoyment of it by further explaining why [I think] it's so funny."

Dear Jack W:

Not to worry -- I'm sure the antique shop couple were reimbursed the full $400 (probably more, off-camera) that the shop owner estimated the smashed merchandise was worth. One of the NY feminists said she was paid $450 to appear in the movie.

Dear Rebecca:

Correct me if I'm suffering from some kind of Rumsfeldian amnesia, but I don't quite recall defending the "Borat" movie using "Throw the Jew Down the Well" (which was from "Da Ali G Show" and isn't in the movie). See "Borat: For Make Milgram Experiment." I wrote:

I'm not so sure that at least some of the people in the crowd weren't in on the joke -- particularly the lady who makes the horns, because she seems aware she's on camera and has evidently decided to play along.

To me, what makes "Throw the Jew Down the Well" funny is the set-up, the first verse, which goes:

In my country there is problem,
And that problem is transport.
It take very very long,
Because Kazakhstan is big.

Throw transport down the well
So my country can be free
We must make travel easy
Then we’ll have a big party

I admit, though, if I interpreted the character and humor of "Borat" in the way you describe, I wouldn't find it funny, either. But I have sat stone-faced in packed auditoriums while everyone around me was laughing at Paulie Shore or Adam Sandler. I know why something makes me laugh (comedy and criticism -- that's my background!), and why it doesn't. And no amount of after-the-fact rationalization on my part is going to change that. As I wrote a couple years ago, I feel like I could write a disstertation on why I think Sarah Silverman is funny -- and why Sandler, Carlos Mencia, Dane Cook, Rob Schneider and others are not. It all has to do with context, tone, and point-of-view. I think I understand the point you're making, but I don't think comedy can ever quite be taken at "face value." Because then it wouldn't be comedy.

Jim: That's indeed the post I mentioned. Yeah, the lyrics are nonsensical, but, from what I've read, the scene isn't cited so in articles for the wordsmithery. It's the audience reaction that draws the ink.

Ken, I'm not going to repeat myself as infinitum. I've had far more than "four-minute clips" foisted on me. If I actually *didn't* know of what I spoke, you'd be poking valid holes in my argument instead of hanging on to your one repeatedly-refuted assertion like a Bush talking point.

I think that the character of Borat owes a great deal to Andy Kaufman, the grandfather of frustrating comedians. I saw the movie with a friend of mine: to her left was a girl who was lapping Borat up, guffawing at practically every single gag, while to my right sat a young woman with her friends who were mostly offended by it.

I chuckled a few times and I wasn't very offended. But was the movie any good? I can't say exactly. Mostly I saw a display of audacious set ups and payoffs that weren't much interesting or very funny. I think that could be because I found there to be a curious lack in consistency to the Borat character itself. On one hand he seems to be aware of his targets(interview with the feminists), but on the other hand he seems to defy logic(he apparently has no idea that the man wearing the yamakka at the bed and breakfast is a jew). Jim Emerson made that observation too, and I'm not sure that I can illuminate anyone's imagination more than by saying that any attempt to bring logic to that or any other scene in the movie should be avoided.

Like South Park, Borat seems happy to confound, contradict, annoy, infuriate, offend, and, in general, interrupt your life by taking a host of hot button "issues" and pretending to be about them, when really it is all about shock.

Like Andy Kaufman, only Borat himself understands his inner workings. It's up to us to be engaged or not, to leave the room, to be disgusted, to laugh, to be offended. Personally, I felt like I just saw through so much of this that I didn't much care. Part of the way through the movie I actually recalled Werner Herzog's great "Stroczek" also about foreigners in America, but that movie was about a character's journey, while Borat isn't about the journey to America, or the cultural or language issues it purports to be about; it's really just a whole lot of silly, scatalogical pee pee pooh pooh kind of stuff that is sort of...sorry to say it, boring. Coming to America is just the clothesline for weird wacky stuff to happen.

There were moments I liked, especially at the rodeo, where Borat goes on an exagerated neo-con-like tangent that ultimately perplexes the audience in the movie. I especially liked the sequence with the prostitute which somehow contained a sweetness to it. And then there's Borat walking down the road and the sound that comes from his bag after he's dropped it, or the best response to his intimate style of greeting coming from the driving instructor, "i'm not used to that but...ok".

Overall however, this movie to me doesn't bring anything up; it simply pushes hot buttons about as simplistically as Madonna does in her videos, while pretty much every set up is juvenile and forced and comes at you instead of actually coming from real moments.

I finally saw Borat, and my biggest surprise was just how tame it was.

I thought there were several laugh-out loud scenes (Running of the Jews, naked wrestling, etc.) and also a whole lot of dead space. The whole Pamela Anderson storyline was just boring.

What I don't see is why the movie is considered so outrageous or offensive. It actually seems like very "safe" humor to me. Cohen is playing this ridiculous caricature, and he's always winking at us behind his ridiculous-looking moustache so we know it's safe. When Andy Kauffman was doing the same schtick, he didn't have the same safety factor. There was a real confusion about where the real Andy and the "character" of Andy stopped. Here, there are no questions.

I appreciated the laughs, but I don't see this as being nearly as risky or transgressive as, say, von Trier's "The Idiots", a film that truly made me squirm while I was also laughing myself silly.

To me, Borat is a lot more like "Kingpin" with several gross-out gags and not much else going on.

Jim, I've never wanted to take a watch apart -- UNLESS it doesn't keep time correctly.

And so I'll try to explain why I think the second half isn't as funny as the first. And that's because Cohen moves away from the hysterical interviews/confrontations of the first half and starts addressing Borat's personal plight: his sidekick deserting him, his disillusion upon seeing the Pamela Anderson video, his finding true love, etc.

The more BORAT moves from the interview format toward a more traditional movie structure, the weaker it gets.

I wish you WOULD write a dissertation on why you think things are funny. I write humor/satire every day on my website, yet I've never examined why I think these things are funny, I just instinctively know they are (though certainly not to everyone). If you ever find yourself in need of an evergreen article to run while your away, maybe you should write that and have it on tap. It would be fascinating!

We have a new Napolean Dynamite on our hands. Look out Pedro, here comes Borat! Hot Topic executives must be having an orgasm.

Just saw Borat again, and it just drags the second time around. Curiously, I find myself of two minds: I'm really intrigued about the people that Borat meets, however fleeting they are to us, and I really find all the potty humor to be really stupid.

Borat is kind of above criticism in many ways though. He just is. He's not a bore, but he's not exactly a character that I like.

The Pamela Anderson stuff just really drags and makes the second time viewing seem a lot longer than it actually is.

The "funniest" movie of the year, not by a longshot, you just have to go back to "Talladega Nights" or look forward to "Stranger Than Fiction". "Funniest" movie of the decade? I thought everyone was saying that just last year for "The 40 Year Old". How ADD is everyone, anyway?

See, there's a perfect example in the post by Justin.

"Target executives are having an orgasm" is not funny.

"Hot Topic executives must be having an orgasm" is.

Sometimes word choice makes the entire difference!

Oh, I'm sorry, were we supposed to be talking about Borat still?

I saw Borat last night and laughed from beginning to end. However, along with many other people who have posted in thread, I felt a bit "squirmy" at some of the potentially unfair portrayals of Coehn's "victims."

However, it wasn't the big-concept parts of the movie that gave me the most delight. What stuck me is that Cohen is an amazing comic actor and that Borat is a rich and fully conceived character that one could easily imagine to be real- just not from Khazakstan.

The small moments, and small behaviors, in the film were what delighted me the most. One such scene was the masterful way that Cohen made Borat willfully misunderstand the lessons of the humor consultant early in the film. I enjoyed Borat's relationship with the chicken, especially the above mentioned incicent where he frustratedly slams its carrying case down on the groun. Another tood place at th the dinner party scene where Borat seems a bit shy about asking where to deposit the bag he is holding. We know what's in the bag, but the movie, slyly, doesn't shove it in our face. The scene is charming because Borat clearly wants to do right. Moreover, it is sweet because the reaction of the other dinner guests is so unfailingly polite.

I found watching Borat listen to the etiquette coach funny as well. Cohen slouches in exactly the same way that a confused but eager child would on receiving the same lessons.

I found the words to the (fictional) Kazakh national anthem gut-bustingly hilarious- reminiscent of the weird concerns of American middle school social-studies lessons of the past.

Many people have referred to the naked wrestling scene. The naked wrestling, itself, was roughly as amusing as a skit from "Jackass"- that is, not very. However, when Borat and his companion, breifly suspend the ever escalating hostilities, well, had I had any Coke in my mouth I would have spit it all over the two rows in front of me.

Jason Eaken,

I read your comment and there was something distressing about it...

"...Who, by the way, treat him pretty nicely. As do the Christians who "save" him. You may disagree with their views, but what else is there to laugh at? The views expressed by the people at that church, to my memory, aren't offensive or racist, they are sincere."

You missed the joke. People are not laughing at the views of the members in that church, the audience is laughing because we can't believe that they actually are sincere. It is hard for us to imagine that people actually believe in what they are doing, when it is so obviously ridiculous.

In other words, the joke isn't that religious people have crazy beliefs, the joke is that they actually believe in what they are doing to the point where they would run up and down church aisles with their hands in the air being moved by holy spirit and would allow the spirit to enter their body and allow them to speak in tongues…

Sounds like a bad experience with an Ouija board.

"Borat" is hilarious. Cohen is inspired and has the ability, like Peter Sellers, to completely become and humanize wild comic creations.

"Borat" will make you howl. There is a horrifying/hilarious wrestling match in this film that will remain unmatched in chutzpah. This wrestling match, like much of the movie, will leave you in awe. "I can't believe I'm seeing this."

And yet, the movie made me slightly angry. Not because of its unabashed vulgarity or even its clueless, ironic antisemitism or homophobia. No, this movie is an attempt to turn a mirror on fly-over country--the land between the coasts--and show us how backward we are.

Peter Travers applauds this effort in his review:

As Borat Sagdiyev, a visitor from Kazakhstan, Sacha Baron Cohen is a balls-out comic revolutionary, right up there with Lenny Bruce, Andy Kaufman, Dr. Strangelove, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Cartman at exposing the ignorant, racist, misogynist, gay-bashing, Jew-hating, gun-loving, warmongering heart of America.

Labeling the "heart of America" as ignorant is both elitist and clueless. (I'm talking about real elitism here. Not the kind that Limbaugh, Hannity, et al. rail against and claim their party doesn't represent.) "Borat" is a pointed satire that believes that America's failures, ideological and otherwise, originate from the heartland and its populace.

Born in the South, living in a dem-voting city in the Midwest, knowing many folks from both the city and the suburbs, and attending a Evangelical church with both left-leaning and right-leaning folks, I daily straddle the fence between liberals and conservatives. I find a consistent attempt to label the other as wrong, backwards. An attempt to caricature the other. "Borat" is a very sophisticated, hilarious film, but it is pure caricature and its politics are superficial. It's message emerges from the pervasive, destructive "pick a side", are you red or blue?, spirit of the day.

I think comedy shouldn't be mindless and should make you laugh and think.

I realize that sounds simplistic, but I truly think we oftentimes make matters too complicated. I don't know the filmmakers' true intentions, but I know when I watched the movie I laughed so hard I couldn't breathe. I also found some of it tasteless and uncomfortable. The antique shop damage was tasteless, but the Rodeo grandpa and the drunk frat boys was uncomfortable.

Why?

Because all of us think similar thoughts, regardless of how open-minded we pretend to be. It's simply alarming to see a person's private bigotries brought into the open.

I immediately fell for this humor when I first saw Cohen's Ali G show. I became a big fan, but always thought he was funniest when he was not going for shock. Still, the weird feeling you get afterwards is that turned inside out sense of "this isn't funny because it is funny, and therefore it is funny because it isn't". And I suppose that in itself is the real treat. To figure out what we really think is funny and why.

I'm not sure I agree with the notion that humor has to make you think. That sounds a bit ponderous to me. I think the root of humor, as well as drama, is recognition. With drama, we recognize the emotion that is in play and respond to it appropriately, with sadness, joy, etc. In humor, the absurdity or incongruity of the idea presented makes us laugh. We can laugh at discomfort or horror for just that reason - that slight skewing of perspective.

Don't want to misattribute a quote. Travers only said that first sentence. The rest is me.

What I liked about the flick is the anthropological tension. Borac's folks and home country were = to the "born agains" in their sense of community and their naivety in terms of the how the "we" would perceive "them."

Haven't seen such a bent movies in 30 years.

I shall be blunt: as a European I think there is something very disturbing about the way Emerson and his readers divide the world in the righteous and the damned, that is to say that puritan political correctness, which makes Americans so endearing to the rest of the world. There is an eerie quality to the quick offence some of the bloggers take at differently-opinioned people and the vehemence and absolutist denouncements that follow. Ironically, this makes them indistinguishable from the neoconservative press that they deride. Jokes about exaggerated stereotypes are very often funny (within margins, of course) about any group, like the American goys in the movie. That some people feel compelled to adopt a tone of haughty scorn, making irrelevant charges against large numbers of people they have never met, is not a laughing matter. I don’t see how those bar patrons are as menacing as the KKK in the past, just because they fail to gasp with appropriate horror at the Jew-in-the-Well-song (after different takes). If Baron Cohen wanted to expose real anti-Semitism he should have gone to the Nation of Islam. But that might be a little more “brave� than he deems prudent.

Sacha Baron Cohen is indeed a nice social-liberal from Hampstead. I don’t think he is Emerson’s kind of liberal, though. He is widely reviled by the British liberal establishment for making millions by taking the piss out of black culture. They will also never forgive him for poking fun at political correctness by making British Old Left-grandee Tony Benn look like an idiot. As Harry Thompson, an early Ali G producer, said: "We thought, if he had a whiff of Islam about him, people would be afraid to challenge him." Like it, or not, this is what made him famous. Not his fearless quest to expose anti-Semitism lurking in the hearts of Americans.

I think the movie is funny and, given his controversy in Brittain, I also think it is very understandable for Baron Cohen to look for safe targets (Kazakhs, rednecks). If you are looking for meaning than I have to agree with English writer Tony Parsons, who commented about Baron Cohen’s carreer: “boil-in-a-bag rebellion is here to stay. The plastic rebels are among us, and we will never be rid of them now.�

Why does someone not "get it" if they don't find Borat funny? I get it. I can see why certain people would find it funny, but the underlying premise of the movie is disheartening and almost disgusting. Cohen is not trying to conduct a socialogical experiment, nor is he trying to expose the ignorance of others. The reality is that Cohen simply seeks to play on the innocence of others for a profit. He is misrepresenting himself and the film to these people soley for the purpose of making others look stupid. I "get" the joke. It's the equivalent of high school jocks pretending to be friends with unpopular kids or mentally disabled kids. Everyone "gets" it besides the affected person and that kind of humor is immature. What's worse, Cohen is making millions from this.

Like the comment above, this movie is very Andy Kauffman-esque. Unfortunately, I never found a single thing that Andy Kauffman did, funny. I thought he was not creative or interesting, just annoying. I found Borat just as annoying, not offensive, just annoying.

Oh you people make me sick. I agree with Armand White. Talk about social confusion. And it's only you white folks who are confused. You think black people need a movie like Borat to remind us of existing racism? These are not breakthroughs for us. If you all hadn't been SO insistent about us being the ones playing the race card, maybe you'd realize that you're the ones manufacturing the deck. You keep it in stock. Fresh decks coming off the assembly line daily. What? We're not supposed to use them? And you think any racists watching this movie are going to have a change of heart. If anything they will dig their heels in for the long haul. Slave master DNA is hard to repress. The poster above who mentioned how the Danish audience didn't laugh at certain scenes that they had thought funny initially, just goes to prove White's point about social confusion. And White is dead-on about 'tastless people finding this humor edgy' and how 'polarizing' is a code word for those wanting social divisiveness.' It's also an opportunity for people who harbor deep-seated prejudices to be able to laugh freely out loud. Oh yeah, I'm hip to that. I've had it with the load of dung you people are shoveling with this business of irony and satire. Sell that to the same people who looking to buy swampland in Florida.

Borat simply s*cks! And maybe if people keep beating him up, he'll go away. Borat getting his butt kicked... now that's what I call irony, satire, edgy, polarizing. Hope they get it on camera the next time it happens.

Trashy, culture-denigrating humor is commonly dubbed "satire" by the very intellectuals whose empty pop-scholarship drags cultural standards down.

I was quite disappointed by Borat, considering all the glowing reviews and box office success which prompted me to watch it.

I must have been the only one in the theater to "not get it."

The jokes and scenarios were not very funny and some went on and on. For example, the "bathroom" scenes at that etiquette dinner were grotesque.

Borat's attempts to get his characters to say racist and anti semitic things was forced and painful to watch.

Thumbs down from this disappointed viewer.

ANYONE WHO IS OFFENDED BY THIS FILM IS COMPLETELY MISSING THE POINT! It may be hidden within all the comedy, but, and I agree with Ebert, the film, whether intentionally or not, is a study on the evils of American prejudice and racism and homophobia. It shows that all prejudice comes from ignorance, as Borat is one of the most ignorant people on Earth. He thinks Jews can morph into cockroaches. Although he hates gay people he doesn't realize that his actions are highly homosexual. You see, its the NAME that freaks him out, the NAME that produces his hatred. Borat is the equivolent of many American bigots. Granted, this isn't going to change their mindset by any means, but it is very insightful to those of us who aren't bigots. Listen, it's not like I'm not one of the groups that Borat "targets." I am gay. But, I don't get automatically offended. After all, this IS NOT an offensive movie by any means. It is against prejudice, not for it. Aside from being an insanely funny comedy, the movie makes you think. After all, some of the best comedies ask questions (Dr. Strangelove, The Graduate, etc.) I very much enjoyed this film. I wish you would all GET OVER IT. Instead of being instantly offended, think about it a little. KUDOS TO SBC. I think the man is a genius.

I didn't find this movie offensive. However, I certainly didn't find it to be the "funniest movie ever!" either.

Don't judge me as tasteless, but I honestly laughed much harder at "Grandma's Boy," already making "Borat" not the funniest movie even this year. Now, of all time, "Borat" is nothing compared to "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," "Dumb and Dumber," "The 40 Year Old Virgin," etc.

"Borat" is funny in spots, rarely more than a little chuckle, though. It also happens to be a depressing, ugly little movie...which fits the very haunting expose of some ignorant people in our country. Because of the contrast between the disturbing and funny content, though, I found the movie a little hard to laugh at. It is more challenging than most comedies, which is good. But to call this "the funniest movie ever" is a gross overstatement. This is a good movie with some funny scenes, but let's not get carried away here...

During an "All Things Considered" interview in 2004, Baron Cohen told NPR's Robert Siegel that he wrote his Cambridge thesis on Jewish involvement in the American Civil Rights movement, focusing especially on the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

I'd like to know the age of all the posters on the site and would guess that most of the dissenters are over the age of 35 and most of the people that liked it are a little bit younger. I'm 31, living in the Midwest, lean right politically and I am a banker and yet I loved the movie. I thought it was hilarious and had me laughing from beginning to end. Maybe I'm immature, but I don't look too deep into comedy. If it makes me laugh, it makes me laugh, that's good enough for me. I know my parents wouldn't think the movie is funny and that's ok, different generation, but if you're under 35 and hate the movie you are too uptight, boring, snobby or all three. And those of you who did hate the movie and under 35 probably would think that I'm immature, dumb, a little snobby or all three. I wonder if Borat could confirm these stereotypes.

The movie is …memorable. And it’s different, for a variety of reasons.

1. I discussed the movie for several hours with a friend afterwards, which is rare for me. We talk about various scenes, whether they were real or staged, what we thought was funny and why, how people in movie had reacted.

2. I am German, so I am super alert to any whiff of anti-semitism and I find it difficult to laugh about any type of “Jewish� joke at all. Yet, I thought the scenes with the Jewish egg and fearful Borat protecting himself with a cross and throwing dollar notes to the two cockroaches were hilarious. They beautifully demonstrated the absurdity of such beliefs (or make beliefs). It was a great parody where the joke is on those who adher to or propagate such absurd myths, and not on their subjects.

3. I was surprised that the audience (mainly European/Belgian) did not laugh about the scenes of naked Borat wrestling with his equally naked friend. It was apparently unpleasant for people to watch.

4. The movie was different from what I had expected. I thought it would be a very critical look at American life and society, a bit like Micheal Moore but funnier. It wasn’t. What I saw were mostly polite Americans trying to remain polite in the presence of this outrageous and insulting foreigner.

5. I, too, do not share the view that the interview with "a trio of middle-aged feminists" is a joke "on their age and politeness." I was amazed to see how they kept their composure. Borat did not get to them. I suppose they had been “b-s�ed plenty of times before and Borat was probably quite tame by comparison.

6. I felt some pity for the fratboys and the rodeo guy, as awful as it is what they say, since it is obvious that they trust Borat.

7. Did the rodeo horse really fall over as part of the turmoil or was it a staged scene?

Jiminy Glick has more "balls" than Borat? Are you kidding me? Jiminy Glick is a charcater whose "targets" are friends who know perfectly well that it is Martin Short in a fatsuit asking them funny questions- that is ballsy? Ballsy is going in to a comedy situation not knowing if your mark is going to beat the crap out of you each time you say something odd. I am one of the ten people who actually enjoyed Glick, but comparing his humor to Borat's shows the declining mental state of that moron who I will not name.

"ANYONE WHO IS OFFENDED BY THIS FILM IS COMPLETELY MISSING THE POINT!"

Sorry, the "point" isn't as big as you think it is; films, especially ones like this have no real results. A large number of people have gotten the so-called "point" and are tired of it. Tired of hearing how racist Americans are, especially from a carpet-bagging British comedian while entire soccer stadiums in Europe stand and give Nazi salutes and while ethnic wars rage elsewhere. Tired of hearing how all mid-westerners, or fly-over-state inhabitants are uneducated and full of prejudice. Tired of a hack-ish idea that was done better the first and last 20 times it was presented. Tired of the hypocracy that comes from making a film about these so-called issues all the while performing the exact same stereotyping behaviour. Even though it could have been much more effective, the film "Crash" was miles beyond this drivel.

Borat, like all other "reality" pieces, is an unfair setup and the "point" can be spun no matter what. When people encounter the character (i.e. people in the film) they either may think the man is real, don't think he is real but don't call him out on it, or just play along. So in the first case, you can always find an idiot to support your position or someone who will appear as an idiot even though they are engaging in a form of B.S. And in the second case you can present the person as uneducated or laughable because they "don't see that it is a joke". In any of the cases, there is little in relation to reality as the editor can pick and choose those things that suit his cause.

I wonder what would happen if the roles were reversed? For example, take an American "Borat" and drop him in the middle of Europe or really anywhere else. Would he encounter the same types of things? I'm quite sure. Would the film be recieved in the same way? I hardly think so. One can only imagine the heaps of "Ugly American" comments that would be made, the most vocal ones coming from Americans themselves. God knows what would happen if that American tried to pass themselves off as someone of another ethnicity. I can already hear the screams from the ACLU, et. al. But, hey, no one really knows about Borat's homeland, so that makes Coehn's portrail ok, right? (sarcasm)

Sorry, Cohen is no genius. He takes the easy way out. Let's see him do a film in Darfur or say, the tribal areas of Pakistan. But that wouldn't be pollitically correct, would it?

How condescending for a reviewer to suggest that 'some people' don't get Borat. What does that mean? Because they don't like a movie that you enjoy they must not be as smart as you? What about personal tastes? What about people who don't enjoy Candid Camera-style humor? What about people who think the movie's mean-spirited? Because they don't agree with you they 'don't get it'? What a condescending attitude for those critics to adopt -- as if their movie tastes are somehow superior, as if they have some key to deeper understanding that regular people just couldn't possibly get.

Get over yourselves, you insipid, patronizing, pretentious pseudo-intellectuals.

i only saw one reference to "all in the family", but all this sounds very familiar. my father, who was a bit of a prude, asked me once if i didn't think the show was racist. i didn't think there was much point in explaining how much i disagreed. some people will dislike this sort of satire because they are the ones being skewered, and don't like being told how stupid they are. some people, like my father, will just dislike it because it has something to say and (this is the main point) is not very nice about saying it. haven't seen Borat yet -- seems like one that can wait for the video -- but i'm sure i'll like it, just by reading all the reasons people have for disliking it.

I dislike Borat, AliG, and Bruno because all three characters are united by the schtick of humiliating people.

"Well they deserve it" is hardly an appropriate response.

Cohen is better as an actor than as a writer because as an actor he is not allowed to deceive people into buying into his games of ritualized humiliation.

To those who claim only to be mildly amused by the film: if Baron Cohen had gone out and made a dramatic film about bigotry, would anyone have gone? It is the funniest film in years both because you laugh at the theater, and because you remember the film later. Does anyone really remember anything Jimminy Glick ever said? Get serious.

Borat shows prejudice through the ignorance of a country (fictional in its depiction by Cohen) that is immersed in ignorance and distance from the outside world.
The disturbing people in this movie are those from the USA who show deeply-rooted prejudices through not only ignorance but a glorious celebration of Pure HATE (Take the comments by the guy who headed up the rodeo where Borat sang).
This movie, and Cohen, expose those who are really the bigots by approaching those people in their Reality; for Cohen, his bigotry is as made-up as his own version of Kazakhstan.
Cohen and his movie are Pure Genius and one of the funniest, freshest movies I have ever seen.

I thought the movie was hilarious, but some people I know who saw Da Ali G Show didn't think it was as funny. I've read the same sentiment on the internet. I've only seen a little of Da Ali G Show, but I remember the Borat sketches on it not being as meanspirited as the movie. Not that I didn't laugh at the meanspiritedness, but that's likely what puts off many people to the film.

I enjoyed the film as a comedy and not as a polemic on American society. The fact that racism, classism, sexism, etc. still exists in this country is not at all a surprise. I will, however, say that the frat boy scene was depressing simply because we were watching some *college students* on the big screen being drunken asses. These are the people who will possibly run the country later in life. And its also funny/depressing that that people don't bat an eyelid when confronted by this "Kazakhstani" who is totally backwards and a racist and a sexist and every bad thing you could imagine. The effect of the humor would have been diluted if Cohen had just made up some country. By using a real country and creating a total caricature from that country, he shows how little people know about other countries. And that's more of a revelation than anything about racism or sexism or anti-Semitism in the film.

I felt the anti-Semitist jokes are used more to reveal the ignorance of Americans about other countries rather than exposing anti-Semitism in Americans. Sure, there's the scene with the gun shop owner, but I figure he was just saying anything to get a sale. Besides, if Cohen wanted to be more relevant, he would have done more to tackle anti-Muslim sentiments.

The Bruno movie should be interesting, though a film on how homophobia is common would be as surprising as Morgan Spurlock's film about how fast food's bad for you.

The reason the encounter with the sweet, elderly Jewish bed-and-breakfast owners works is primarily that the joke is on Borat: he's an unthinkingly virulent anti-Semite, but he's clearly never met an actual Jew. When that scene began in the movie, I heard whispers throughout the entire audience: "Oh no! I hope he's not mean to them! Nooo. They're so nice!" And indeed, while Borat behaves like an idiot *about* the innkeepers, Cohen is never directly cruel to them, and they leave the encounter with more dignity than almost anyone else in the movie, with the insinuation that more Americans should be like them. Meanwhile, it shows that Borat's prejudice comes from ignorance.

In general, I don't think most viewers who liked the movie were put off by his prejudices because they were so exaggerated and ridiculous. I have wonderful friends from Eastern Europe who are all vaguely prejudiced against Rom ("gypsies"), but to most Americans it's kind of an alien thing. In all the media coverage, it seems inescapable that: Kazakhstan isn't really "like that," SBC is an observant Jew, Borat is a fantasy version of a foreign correspondant, a guy who seems not so much from another country as from another planet, and who in spite of his considerable prejudice is not possessed of particular malice.

If it helps, the article in Salon (do a search on "borat" to find it) reports that the antique shop owners were paid the full amount owed off-camera. Luenell is an actor/comedian, and Pam Anderson was in on the joke.

I thought the movie was funny and upsetting. The scenes that people point to again and again are scenes that nobody else in the audience at the showing we saw laughed at at all: the rodeo manager and the frat boys. One girl in the row in front of us was vocally angry very early in the frat boy scene, when the cockiest of the guys (the only one I thought came out particularly badly in that scene) described his despicable dating tactics.

For me, although I didn't think the wrestling scene was terribly funny (so much as just *wrong*), I found the stuff about Borat-the-person more interesting than the ambush interviews. Two not-really-Kazakh men (they "follow the Hawk"!) in an ice cream truck with their charming pet bear is a situation interesting enough that I want to know more about it.

Mr Sasha Cohen might have full rights to boast of Kazakh origin and Turkic-Mongolian Heritage!

http://www.khazaria.com/

Most modern day Jews are the descendants of Khazars, Mongolian -Turkic nation, converted to Judaism, next of kin to Kazakhs..

The Jewish surname Cohen is derived itself from Turkic-Mongolian Cahan, or Khan - the King. Remember fearsome Gengiz Khan?

http://www.khazaria.com/turkic/kazakhstan.html

Medieval Kingdom of Khazaria, 652-1016
Over a thousand years ago, the far east of Europe was ruled by Jewish kings who presided over numerous tribes, including their own tribe: the Turkic Khazars. After their conversion, the Khazar people used Jewish personal names, spoke and wrote in Hebrew, were circumcised, had synagogues and rabbis, studied the Torah and Talmud, and observed Hanukkah, Pesach, and the Sabbath. The Khazars were an advanced civilization with one of the most tolerant societies of the medieval period. It hosted merchants from all over Asia and Europe. On these pages it is hoped that you may learn more about this fascinating culture.

I really thought the movie was great. I guess I caught the true meaning unlike alot of others. Wake up! Those scenes with the frat boys and the red-neck cowboy hit home. I have lived during my 50 yrs in alot of places...New England and Midwest mostly, so I speak from personal experience, those people really do exists!! I think Ebert's [Emerson's] review of the movie hit it exactly right. Anyways...I thought it was great and caught myself many times viewing it thinking to myself..."things that make you go hmmmmmm?"

good review

Yea, There were some funny scenes. But some things are not funny. To me this wasn't a gut busting funny movie. I like stupied movies, but this movie was just plain lame. I don't agree with making jokes about retardation, Hell, I think reality TV should be banned. I had to walk out of the movie when the naked Fight scene was going on. I give it a "F", just because its a reality base movie. We all know about the predudisims in this country why should we relive it on the big screen? Makes no sense to me at all. I'm glad I didn't waste my money on this trash. I bet some of those people that signed those pieces of paper regret it now. I failed to see the humor.