RNL
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Posts: 6,624
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Post by RNL on Nov 16, 2006 15:35:11 GMT
This was disappointing. The joke works better in the short TV format, I think, and the movie's nothing I haven't seen there already, except for the faux-documentary framing device, which is either forgotten or discarded for most of the skits, so I struggle to see the point of establishing it. Moreover, it adds a deflating sense of contrivance to nearly every scene. It's the individual interviews that are funny, the story and the documentary conceit are just excuses to string some together.  I got a few good laughs, though. |
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Omar
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Post by Omar on Nov 16, 2006 15:57:39 GMT
Almost everyone I know has seen it and loves it. Many find it funny, but many critics also note it for it's social commentary and eye-opening (negative) look at the United States.
I still really want to see it. Probably when I go home for Thanksgiving.
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RNL
Global Moderator
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Post by RNL on Nov 16, 2006 16:16:40 GMT
All he does is expose the extreme bigotry of a few American individuals - he gets a few misogynistic frat-boys drunk, chats to an old cowboy about homosexuality, and... um... that's about it. Seriously, maybe I'm forgetting something, but at most it's a half-handful of very easy targets. Most of the people he meets are as accomodating and courteous as anyone could be expected to be in the circumstances he imposes.
I don't think there's any coherent social commentary at all, aside from "Some people in the US are bigoted."
It was far, far funnier, and more unsettling, when he targeted actual political figures on the TV show, and showed up their anti-Semitic, anti-Islamic, anti-gay, anti-anything-but-themselves tendencies.
He doesn't do that here, it's mainly farce and gross-out physical humour, which actually reminded me vividly of Tom Green and Jackass at times.
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Capo
Administrator
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Post by Capo on Nov 16, 2006 18:09:00 GMT
I found it notably powerful in the humourous sense. I make no false claim in saying it rewards on revisits (I suspect drastically that it doesn't), but until I see it again, it's one of the funniest experiences I've had in the cinema.
If people are praising Saw III for making people faint, I have no hesitation in praising this for making me laugh.
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jrod
Ghost writer
Posts: 970
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Post by jrod on Nov 17, 2006 3:52:43 GMT
If it was just clip after clip like the tv show is, without the attempts to hold a storyline throughout, it wouldve been ten times as funny. Like wetdog said, the show is better.
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Boz
Published writer
Posts: 1,451 
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Post by Boz on Jan 21, 2007 22:11:38 GMT
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan  (2006/Charles)For some reason I had trouble giving 3 stars to a film with this mockumentary style, I kind of prefer straight up narrative fiction comedies I guess, but this is the most I've laughed in the theaters in a while.
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Boz
Published writer
Posts: 1,451
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Post by Boz on Jan 21, 2007 22:26:17 GMT
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Capo
Administrator
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Post by Capo on Apr 7, 2007 13:52:15 GMT
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Larry Charles 2006 USA / UK
A TV reporter from Kazakhstan travels to New York with his agent, and thence to California, in search of cultural enlightenment and Pamela Anderson.
It is perhaps too lazy to defend Sacha Baron Cohen's shameless anti-Semitism here by guarding him with the fact that he is himself Jewish. Similarly, it might also be naïve to assume his intention is to expose the ignorance in general, or racism in particular, of those unwitting individuals he confronts in the course of the film - or indeed, that of those who laugh at the film. As a mockumentary, it works a whole lot better than Ali G inda House, and, regardless of the (deliberately) difficult questions arising from possible racism, its best moments are its visual gags - Borat 'settling into' his new hotel room, an elevator; causing disastrous, expensive havoc in an antiques store; and a lengthy naked wrestle with his obese agent in the hotel at which they're staying, with Borat's penis covered with an exaggeratedly long censor.
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