Borat

Rating: R16 – Contains Offensive Language, Sexual Material & Other Content May Offend.
Duration: 80 mins.
Genre: Comedy, Political Comedy, Spoof.
Actors: Sacha Baron Cohen.
Director: Larry Charles.
Release Date: Available Now.

"Kazakhstan greatest country in the world.
All other countries are run by little girls.
Kazakhstan number one exporter of potassium.
Other countries have inferior potassium."

If the (full) title or the “lyrics” to the Kazakhstan national anthem (above) doesn’t make you even the slightest bit curious, then you’d best stay away from Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

You see it’s either the type of humour that has you doubled over in stiches, or it’s gonna offend you like nobody has before.

And that is I guess, where all the controversy comes from; people who just don’t get Sacha Baron Cohen’s sense of humour.

In reality this kind of humour has been around since the dawn of television, with Candid Camera. It’s all about seeing how far you can push people into accepting (or doing) the unbelievable, and along the way (especially in the case of Borat) uncovering bigoted attitudes.

It’s a Michael Moore documentary without the conspiracies, though the “fat guy” himself does appear in the special features.

So what is this movie all about?

The basic premise is a road trip, where by Kazakhstan’s most famous (probably only) television personality travels to America to see what he can learn form the wealthiest country in the world to help Kazakhstan, the poorest country in the world.

In documentary style, he interviews or interacts with numerous facets of American society, and in most cases the people he interacts with come away with egg on their collective faces.

Though it’s not all-poking fun at innocent people, Borat has a healthy attitude to poking fun at his own character as well.

Anti-sematic I hear you ask. Sure there is a fair bit of anti-Jewish comedy in Borat (the Kazakhstan population apparently hate the Jewish people with a rabid fear) but the humour is so clichéd and over the top as not to be taken seriously.

And then there’s the Pentecostal Church scene, that begins like a page out of Under The Overpass, and ends up giving Borat a slightly softer personality and a more philosophical outlook on life;

“If you chase a dream, especially those with a plastic chest, you can miss the real beauty in front of your eyes.” –Borat

The Jewish question even goes 180 degrees by the end of the movie.

Crass and sleazy in places, Borat does push the boundaries of what is deemed acceptable in popular culture, but fortunately sees the sense, and the additional humour, in using “black bars” to cover up the “naughty” bits in one particularly unbelievable and funny scene in a hotel.

Overall, if you push past the “I’m setting you up for a fall” style of humour, you can see that Borat is actually teaching us something about our own attitudes towards people who don’t belong to our own “group.”

There is almost no one in this movie that doesn’t exhibit some kind of disdain to one segment of society or another, and if we use this as a warning and take an honest look at ourselves in the mirror, we could actually come away from Borat a better person.

Food for thought:
Is Borat a bigot for showing us how bigoted we are?

Rent or Buy?
Tough decision, with Borat firmly in the you’re either gonna love it or hate it camp, renting might be the safest option, unless you saw it at the cinema and loved it, then you’re gonna want to buy it and convert all your friends to Borat’s way of life!