Saw Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan on Saturday with the rest of Boston. My take - it was good, but it could have been better. In fact, it had the potential to be really hilarious, but instead it was just funny.
I admire Sacha Baron Cohen's fearlessness when it comes to stereotype and prejudice. No one is left untouched - the unfriendly New Yorkers, the manly feminists, the 'hood dwellers, the old-money Southerners, the all-Muslims-are-terrorists Texans, the charismatic Christians, the hospitable Jews, the lush frat boys on a road trip, and so on - all alike fall prey to many a Borat cultural faux pas. (Come to think of it, I don't remember any Hispanic jabs. Perhaps I'm forgetting.) All of these interactions are uniformly awkward and funny, and they certainly bring out latent prejudices that exist among Americans in several categories. They aren't exaggerated too much to seem real. The most telling and brilliant part of the movie happens when Borat sings the Kazakh national anthem to the tune of the Star-Spangled Banner (it's not the real national anthem, but rather Borat's jumbled, proud version) at a rodeo. Before he sings, however, he introduces himself and proceeds with warlike chants about how we will kill everyone in Iraq and Bush will drink the blood of every Iraqi citizen, and the crowd cheers and applauds without hesitation, until Borat gets extreme, and then they are only reticent in their applause. Still, they applaud. It's difficult to explain the scene, but it comes off not as explicitly anti-war, but rather as an assault on American thoughtlessness.
I also love Borat's turns of phrases. However, too often they revert to stupid and sexual humor. I don't mind this humor every now and then, but in Borat it's over the top. Some of it made me feel very self-conscious, which was the point, I suppose, and I didn't mind that, but a good bit of it wasn't all that funny. Overall, the movie could have been funnier if Sacha Baron Cohen had focused more on stereotypes and Kazakh phraseology than on his libido. I guess that's what people like, and it's earning him some serious dough. But the greatest comedy of all time? I think not.
We watched the TV show on the bus ride to a fencing tournament this weekend. It seemed as if it could gather a rather devoted set of bizarre-minded friends: in short, a cult classic. Still not sure what I make of it all (Borat combined with Alli G segments).
I think the point of the humor in the movie was to make people laugh at what isn't supposed to be funny. It's all summed up in the scene when Borat is talking to the man about humor in New York. He asks if he can make a certain kind of joke, the man tells him that Americans don't find that funny and then the rest of the movie uses that kind of humor to make Americans laugh, really hard. I think the real joke of this movie is at the expense of the people who do find it hilarious.
True. It's the humor personified in Borat that people find hilarious. In most contexts, I'd venture to say that Americans wouldn't find the mother-in-law joke funny, but when people see that Borat finds humor in it, they do, too.
Stranger Than Fiction was actually a funnier movie, but of course I'm much more into dark dramedies than toilet humor these days.
yes, but you did watch The Office . . .
The Office is most definitely dark dramedy. You notice it more in the second season and the finale. I consider that painful humor, not toilet humor.