I’m afraid that the astonishing box office success of Borat heralds the end of western civilization as we have known it.
Recently, two events took place that bode ill for the future of America. The first of these was the election, which saw such buffoons as Nancy Pelosi, Charles Rangel and Harry Reid, assume power and influence they are no better equipped to handle than Daffy Duck or Elmer Fudd.
The second event was the release of the movie, Borat. Of the two, Borat is probably the more troubling. After all, thinking adults can entertain opposing points of view when it comes to such things as Iraq, the economy and even affirmative action, but I’m afraid that the astonishing box office success of this movie heralds the end of western civilization as we have known it.
As a rule, I don’t write about movies. Although I reviewed them for more than a decade, I rarely bother seeing them these days. However, I felt I owed it to those poor souls who hated Borat as much as I did, but were reluctant to say so for fear of being branded square and humorless, to let them know that they’re not alone.
A few of my friends, knowing what a low tolerance I have for dumb movies, were surprised that I went to see it. Well, naturally I knew that the movie was in bad taste, but I thought that just meant that it trampled all over the tender sensibilities of those who adhere to the strictest tenets of political correctness. I thought that it merely made fun of feminists, minorities and other sacred cows. Instead, I found it was filled with bathroom humor of the first grade level. I would have thought its natural audience would be six-year-olds. Until now, I had always thought that Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971, Dustin Hoffman) was the worst movie ever made with a dozen or more words in its title, but it has now been unceremoniously bumped into second place by Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
For those of you who have managed to avoid the one-man publicity onslaught of Sacha Baron Cohen, a British comic who co-wrote the script and portrays Borat Sagdiyev, the movie is about a TV personality from Kazakhstan who comes to the U.S. with his producer to make a documentary about America. They wind up crossing the country, having one tiresome escapade after another. I stumbled out of the theater feeling as if it was I who had just made the trip by bus, seated for the entire 3,000 miles next to the most obnoxious lout in the world.
To my mind at least, it’s no coincidence that the name Borat has the same root as such words as bore, boor, bozo and brat.
If you’re in the mood to venture out to see a new movie, I can recommend The Illusionist and, better yet, The Queen. If you’re in the mood to laugh — and after the recent election, why wouldn’t you be? — I would suggest you rent Groundhog Day (1993, Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell), My Cousin Vinny (1992, Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei), Midnight Run (1988, Robert DeNiro and Charles Grodin) or one you’ve probably never even heard of, Bachelor Mother (1939, Ginger Rogers and David Niven).
Unlike Borat, which should only make you retch, these four movies will all make you laugh. And, best of all, you won’t hate yourself in the morning.
I realize this review is an attempt to be politically correct and humorous. I haven’t seen the movie, but have shuddered at the whole spectacle: the crassness, the unethical approach, the success of it all, and what this may portend. But it would have been more helpful to me as a reader if the author had been more specific about the awfulness of this movie. Saying that you don’t like something the gazillionith time, each time with a different adjective, does not say anything more than saying it once. Next article, please get beyond your feelings and explain your ideas.
Just from the commercials you could kind of tell that it was just a bad movie version of Perfect Strangers (without Larry). “Balki Gets Stupid and Goes Cross Country” seems to sum it up.
Why would anyone want to go see this movie? Weren’t the commercials bad enough?
And consider this. My wife and I, recently, having failed to get into All the king’s men or A Good Year (one was sold out, the other had a technical problem) wound up in a movie starring Brad Pitt, Babel. This film was postmodern bleakness taken to an extreme. It was so unrelentingly dark that I stepped into the Borat film across the hallway, only to find that I had gone from suicidal, masturbatory violence to two naked men rolllign around in a bed, tusseling over a dirty magazine. But the descent into nihilism and stupidity isn’t totally new, as viewers of dumb and dumber and mystic river probably know.
I would add one other comedy to your list — Planes, Trains and Automobiles….of course there are others as well. Hollywood does make a mistake every now and then and actually makes a movie worth seeing.
My take on Borat is a bit different. I think what makes him so funny is not that
Americans are “secretly racist”, but that they’ve become so idiotically tolerant of,
as Borat thoroughly demonstrates, everything. Simply claiming to be from an
obscure country enables Borat to behave in any manner possible–including making
anti-semetic cracks. He is, after all, “culturally different”–and so “who can judge?”
In his other persona, Ali G., Baron-Cohen does the same thing, this time as a rasta-rap
dudester. Anyway there is a great interview with Andy Rooney that “didn’t work out” and
is tucked at the end of one of the HBO series DVDs. Rooney is to be interviewed, but gets
annoyed at B-C’s rap-rasta lingo–and tells his that his language is not only wrong but that
he’s an idiot. BC is a bit stunned–but then begins hounding Rooney for being “racialist”. Rooney
responds, saying “Do you think you’re black?” BC says “yes”!
The point is that B-C is able to take a media stereotypes of blacks (that they’re rasta-rappers)
and–as a white man–employ these “cultural cliches” in order to
intimidate some of the world’s most powerful people. It’s an absolute riot–but says
everything about how politically correct culture has absolutely destroyed any
sense of common decency that might have at one time existed. All pales beneath
the mantra, “don’t judge cultural difference”–even if it’s a white guy impersonating
a “different” culture.
One more point. B-C has claimed that his humor “exposes” anti SEmitism because, as
his tutor once told him, “the road to Auschwitz is paved with indifference. While that latter point
may or may not be true, B-C’s various personas expose the more obvious truth that if
Hitler were alive today, the most effective way of selling his Nazi movement
would be to claim it was simply an example of “cultural difference”. This, as B-C has demonstrated,
would be accepted by the majority of Americans –who have long since been bludgened
out of holding values that might lead them to openly call nonsense, well, nonsense .
(well, except for Andy Rooney)