This probably won't be my standard comic spew. I'll try to spice it up with a "Shmoo-ism" or two but if I’m reviewing a movie that 16 people have already reviewed… that probably means that I have something to say and have glossed over a diatribe of comments that concern me.

To those who have read what I have written to date, it should come as no surprise that not only do I like this movie but I find it to be one of the best comedies to come out in the last 10 years.

Please, put the torch down and get the angry mob away from my parapets.
Before you crucify me, realize that I not only respect your right to not like this film but also to be extremely offended by it.
There are millions of people out there just like you, and I’m not big enough to challenge all of you to a fight over a simple movie.
The dragon that lives in my moat might be able to take quite a few of you out however I know that you would kill him eventually and really, what would it solve to have the world’s conservative population eaten by a dragon.

I’m not one of you. Likewise my wife is not one of you. I strongly suspect that my baby, or as I like to call her “Shmoo Two”, won’t be one of you (once her brain cells develop enough that she stops trying to jam the dog in her mouth and laughing at things like toes).
Our senses of humor tend to be a bit more bizarre and cutting edge. Once again I strongly urge you to blame Canada as a country for this. Yes, it probably helps to be Canadian when watching a movie that skewers American sensibilities, however we get our fair share of potshots as well (SouthPark for one) and we take it in a good natured stride.

Myself and Mrs. Shmoo sat down to watch this on Friday night with nervous anticipation. There has been a lot of hype around this film and inevitably I always find those films disappointing, unable to live up to everything I hear.

This was an extreme exception. I was dumbfounded at what I watched. A goofy rictus of a smile froze my face for the full running time of the film. I was almost unable to laugh due to the amazement and awe of what I was watching.
My only prior experience with Sascha Baron Cohen was a light reference on the British TV show The Office, hearing him as the voice of King Julian in the cartoon Madagascar and watching his work as French race-car driver Jean Girard in Talladega Nights.
I was not prepared for him.

THE MOVIE, HIGH FIVE!:

I need to start by saying that Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, and Cohen in particular, have had more than one lawsuit levelled against them.
The town of Glod, Romania (where the opening scenes took place) sued him for making them look stupid. The lawsuit was dismissed.
Two college kids sued the movie (if you’ve seen this, I bet you can’t guess which ones) claiming that Sascha had them sign release forms while they were horribly drunk… as well as the fact that he made them look stupid. The lawsuit was dismissed.
The Government of Kazakhstan threatened to sue him …for making them look stupid… however a politician and the President’s daughter were fans of Cohen’s so they dropped the lawsuit citing “comedic tolerance”.
It was banned in almost every Arab country and censored in Russia,

The film also won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar.

There are only 4 actors in this film, Cohen, Ken Davitian, Pamela Anderson who is an old friend of Cohen’s and Luenell Campbell who plays an enormous black prostitute. Everyone else is a real person and of the impression that this mustachioed character they are encountering is in fact a back water, third world character with little or no couth. The police were called on Cohen numerous times, somewhere between fifty and one hundred depending on the source you site.

The film opens with Borat Sagdiyev (Cohen), a homophobic, anti-semetic (Cohen is Jewish), racist, sexist Kazakhstan TV reporter (and 6th most famous person in the country) showing us around his village. We meet his revered mother, his repulsive wife, his sister the fourth most popular prostitute in town (whom he greets with a prolonged, erotic french kiss) and the town rapist.
We learn that the Kazakh government has asked him to travel to America to make a documentary and learn from them. Borat flies off to New York with his morbidly obese and disgusting producer Azamat Bagatov.

Borat and Azamat (Davitian) then begin an ongoing series of unscripted interviews and situations that reflect not only their ethnicity but also a complete ignorance of North American standards and customs, both jabbering away in their native Kazakh language (actually a pigeon mixture of Russian, Hebrew, Armenian and Polish) when they are confused.
Borat sits down to talk with a group of Women’s Rights activists and the interview ends quickly when he repeatedly calls them names like “Cookie” and tells them that his country has proven that women have brains the size of a squirrel’s.

Soon after landing in New York, Borat is told by the hotel management that his wife, Oksana, has died (High Five!). He spies Pamela Anderson on television and talks his Producer in to traveling to California. He hopes to marry “Palmella” and make sexy time with her.
Due to a fear of flying on the part of Azamat (based on anti-semetic ignorance), they buy an old ice cream truck and begin to drive to California making many stops along the way.

He encounters some very friendly people (members of a Gay Pride parade) and is later shocked and repulsed that the men he willingly invited back to his hotel (and whom he states kindly washed him and almost inserted a large rubber fist in his “anoos”) were homosexuals.
He accidentally stays at a bed and breakfast owned by an elderly Jewish couple whom he’s certain can change shape.
He makes an appearance at a Rodeo and addresses the crowd by saying that he supports their “war OF terror”. This receives huge applause but he continues and becomes more and more graphic in his description of how Iraq should be annihilated until the applause taper out and people are staring in stunned disbelief. Then he butchers the national anthem for good measure.
He goes on a hunt for “Gypsy Tears” to protect him and wanders in to a garage sale where he accuses the owner of being a Gypsy who has camped out on the front lawn. When he picks up a Barbie, he believes the gypsy has shrunk the owner and stolen her stuff.
He enters an antique store and accidentally destroys several hundred dollars worth of goods, which he offers to pay for with pubic hair.
After taking an etiquette lesson, where he innocently shows a picture of himself giving two thumbs up next to his son’s huge penis to his female teacher, he (somehow) gets invited for dinner at a minister’s house. He unwittingly insults the minister’s wife while trying to pay a compliment to the other two women at the table. He excuses himself to use the washroom and just after one of the women state how easy it would be “civilize” these people, he returns to the table with a plastic bag filled with his own poo asking where he should put it.
The police are called on him quickly after he invites a large black prostitute for dessert.


He exits his hotel bathroom one evening to find Azamat pleasuring himself to a picture of his beloved “Palmella”. Borat flies in to a rage and what ensues is possibly both the funniest and hardest to watch fight ever put on screen. The men wrestle naked, in various repulsive positions and then spill out in to the hallway, the elevator (where they pause for a moment, smiling and bobbing their heads at the clearly uncomfortable patrons), the lobby of the hotel and finally a convention hall filled with aghast mortgage brokers.
Azamat walks out on him, taking their money, his passport and their beloved bear and leaving Borat to try and make his way to California on his own.
… and continue he does, setting himself up in more and more situations until he finally meets his beloved Palmella and shows her his traditional Kazakh wedding sack.

Through Borat’s own supposed ignorance and naivety, he uncovers both an unsettling side to North America as well as a surprisingly pleasant one.
While shopping for a gun, he asks the proprietor for the best one to kill Jews and with out missing a beat the proprietor produces what looks like a 357 magnum. While attempting to give the customary Kazakh triple kiss to one of the Rodeo’s male coordinators he is informed that Homosexuals should be hung and is also told to shave off his moustache because he looks too ethnic. While hitching a ride with a trailer of University Frat brothers, they get drunker and drunker until the frat boys tell Borat that slavery should be returned and women will never be as good as men.
..and when he stopped, in what looked like a highly dangerous African American, low income neighborhood (at night) he’s befriended and treated with respect by the youths, completely dashing any preconceived notions. Perhaps this was because of the innocence in his approach and demeanor.

The special features include about half an hours worth of deleted scenes, all of which are funny enough to be included in the Movie.
Borat tries to buy an attack dog, a pathetic tiny creature, to protect him from Jews and then asks the kennel operator how to cook it when he’s finished his journey.
Borat is pulled over by both the police as well as Washington secret service. He visits a grocery store and travels down an aisle asking “What is this” for five minutes straight… to which every answer is “Cheese”.
There’s more… there always seems to be more, including an “actual” rendition of the moronic mock Kazakhstan National Anthem

LOOK AT MY BIG BRAIN, HIGH FIVE!:

The concept of performing unwitting humor is nothing new. I believe Candid Camera started it.
Andy Kaufman took the joke one step farther and almost never let people in on the punch line until it was too late. I always figured Kaufman was ahead of his time despite the fact that his approach to humor ended up ruining his career and millions of people hated him.
Where Cohen works and where Kauffman (or Andrew Dice Clay) didn’t was in the character they chose to portray. Kauffman and Clay were antagonistic, belligerent, unsympathetic loudmouths who people got tired of, however Borat… well…. how can you not love Borat or smile at his child like wonder or at the very least feel sorry for him when he’s hurt. He is a simple, happy, well-meaning foreigner with all the pride, worldviews, ignorance, superstitions and prejudices that his fictitious world dictates.

He doesn’t judge anyone he meets in this movie, despite how different their views are from his, unless they’re Jewish or rude. Likewise he becomes wounded and confused when his views or actions cause him problems.
Cohen’s timing is impeccable, his grasp on cutting edge humor is unrivalled today and his physical comedy is up there with the best slapstick around. The antique shop scene was priceless (pardon the pun).

In 1987 Tony Hendra wrote a book entitled Going Too Far- The Rise And Demise of Sick, Gross, Black, Sophomoric, Weirdo, Pinko, Anarchist, Underground, Anti- Establishment Humor.
Hendra (for those who don’t know him) is a British Humorist who was a member of the Cambridge University comedy troupe with John Cleese and Graham Chapman, a founding editor of National Lampoon Magazine in 1970, a co-creator of Spitting Image (the British Puppet comedy), as well as Band Manager “Ian Faith” in This Is Spinal Tap.
The book outlines the progression of cutting edge humor for the baby boomer generation touching on comedians such as Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, John Belushi and Eddie Murphy.
Many people thought Lenny Bruce was vile and vulgar. That did not make his early humor any less exciting. Many people thought Belushi was a fat addle minded slob, however it has to also be argued that he was a comedic icon of his time.
Many people thought that Eddie Murphy (especially in his Delirious days) was simply foul and offensive and wrote him off.
However this does not weaken his comedy in any way. It does not make him any less funny or edgy.
Likewise the collected works of Monty Python
If Hendra had written the book today, the chapter that dealt with Cohen (who by the way is a Cambridge Grad, Jewish Civil Rights activist and thesis author) would be a forgone conclusion.

People will hate this film, lots of them. They will be offended at the language, or the nudity or the situations or they simply won’t understand the irony of what Cohen chooses to project.
However, this doesn’t make Cohen any less brilliant. It doesn’t diminish his talent or intellect. It doesn’t take away from the fact that he is part of a long line of cutting edge comedians who shape the world of comedy for the next generation.
It’s simply a matter of taste. If your comedy preferences run more towards the safe and inoffensive, You have Newhart, Cosby (surprisingly controversial for part of his career),The Smothers… all funny and all guaranteed not to upset.
But for those of you who are early Prior fans, for those who loved the glory days of Saturday Night Live, for those of you who like the taste of blood in your humor… then mark my words, twenty years from now a comic genius will rise and he or she will credit Sascha Baron Cohen as one of their greatest influences.

Tony Hendra would be happy to know that cutting edge humor is not dead. It was simply resting.

High Five.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age