Jagshemash! My name a Borat!
Plot
Kazakhstani TV
presenter Borat Sagdiyev is commissioned to travel to New York to learn
about American culture. While there he goes rogue, setting off for LA to
follow his dream of making nice sexytime with Pamela Anderson…
Review
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If
you were ever partial to a bit of Ali G, you can be forgiven any
trepidation you may feel towards Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest
small-to-big-screen translation. With his juvenile observations and
clueless gangsta-isms, Ali G was an amusing enough creation, but what
made him work satirically was seeing him interact with real people. It
wasn’t so much that he was a ludicrous ‘yoof’ TV presenter, but that his
unsuspecting interviewees thought he was a ‘yoof’ TV presenter.
So when Cohen took him out of that context and placed him in his own
fictional world, the result wasn’t quite the comedy riot it could have
been. You might have slapped an ASBO on it for indecent exposure, but it
was certainly no riot…
With the Borat movie,
Cohen’s learned his lesson. Like Ali G, Borat — who made his debut on Da
Ali G Show, instantly becoming the funniest thing on it — works by
being thrown in front of real people who, somehow, think he’s for real.
So Cohen’s simply taken the format of the Borat sketches on the show and
expanded them into episodes on a sorta-mockumentary East-to-West Coast
road trip.
Perhaps it’s easy for us to say this,
being in on the joke from the start, but Borat’s such an inherently
funny character, it’s hard to believe that anyone could think he’s bona
fide. Still, he is constructed with astounding precision. Clad in cheap
grey suit, with grey tie and two-tone grey striped shirt, he walks in
awkward little steps, his body language stuttering uncomfortable
deference as an apologetic smile beams out from beneath his heavy
’tache. The accent drawls and lilts erratically, the broken English
dribbling out plenty of catchphrases (“Jagshemash,” “naiiiice”, “haigh
faive!”) and some gobsmackingly offensive comments.
Because,
yes, as amiable as Borat is, he’s also sexist, deeply anti-Semitic and
has an irrational hatred of gypsies. The film doesn’t exactly ease you
into this gently: early on we see a depiction of his village’s
traditional ‘Running Of The Jew’, in which we witness children playfully
stamping on a huge egg laid by a “she-Jew”, encouraged by their elders
to smash it before it hatches. To know that Cohen himself is Jewish may
not, for some, be enough to excuse such outrageous humour, but this is
all part of the set-up: the outrageousness isn’t so much in Borat’s
prejudices, but in how those prejudices go unchallenged by his American
interviewees.
Example: Borat walks into a gun
shop. “Which gun is best for killing Jew?” he asks. The salesman doesn’t
bat an eyelid. “That’d be a 9mm or .38,” comes the unhesitant reply.
Cohen has impressively scant regard for his own well-being, but he’s
sharp enough to know when to keep Borat schtum, too; in one instance he
lets an ageing Texan cowboy hang himself with his own lariat, nodding
silently as the objectionable old bigot lectures Borat on how he should
shave off his moustache because it makes him look like a Muslim. (Borat,
it should be noted, isn’t actually a Muslim; “In Kazakhstan, we worship
hawk,” he solemnly tells the rodeo guy). Such ignorance provides very
rich fuel for Cohen, and it keeps the comedy powerful — both in the
strength of the laughs and the shock of the disbelief — throughout.
This
isn’t just a few smirks and chuckles. Instead, it’s rib-crackingly,
face-hurtingly, endorphin-flushingly hilarious. Empire laughed so hard
we had a full-blown asthma attack. They should slap a health warning on
this movie. And, all the while, you’re getting a very disturbing insight
into the casual prejudices of the average American (although we
recognise that Cohen was hardly going to include footage of those people
who lambasted Borat for his views, or rumbled the ruse).
It’s
tough to fault. One or two of the ‘sketches’ are admittedly reworks of
wind-ups Cohen performed as Borat for Da Ali G Show here in the UK,
while some of his interviews do feel either a tad clipped or too
crowbarred into the coast-to-coast format. But you can’t ignore the
force or the regularity of those laughs. This is Sacha Baron Cohen’s
finest hour, a cult comedy that will likely endure and mature like an
Airplane! or a This Is Spinal Tap. Just don’t go along if you’re easily
offended…
Verdict
Absurd, outrageous, gross, disturbing, insightful, and so funny it’ll burst half the blood vessels in your face.
Source : http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/reviewcomplete.asp?FID=134345
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