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Borat: High 2.5!
Without a doubt, “Borat” is blazingly original, inventive, intelligent, outrageous, fearless, and, of course, shocking.
Too bad it’s not all that funny.
Oh, I laughed here and there, but claims that this is one of the funniest movies ever are grossly exaggerated.
Now I know how non-fans of “Citizen Kane” feel when I insist it’s one of the three greatest films ever made. I can only sit there with a slightly confused look on my face and say, “What’s the big deal?”
While I cannot add to the praise that many have showered on “Borat,” I can understand why they love this film about a TV reporter from Kazakhstan (Sacha Baron Cohen) who has a very educational journey across America while making this faux documentary. Fans of this movie generally fall into three categories:
A) Critics who like to show how hip they are by explaining “Borat’s” “brilliantly subversive” joke. Yes, I get it too. By being so innocently homophobic, racist and sexist, the guileless Borat holds up a mirror to us. Borat is me as you are he as you are me and we are all together. But if you really believe the filmmakers’ line that all the footage in this movie is real, well, here’s another clue for you all: the walrus was Paul.
B) People who adore lowbrow, frat boy humor.
C) People who have been drunk or stoned at least once in their life.
With the exception of choice A, I don’t fall into any of these categories. But since I am the analytical sort, I am going to try to explain why I didn’t laugh very much.
I don’t dispute that there are great moments. Even though I don’t care for lowbrow humor, the funniest scene was probably the grossest: Borat’s nude wrestling with his overweight companion. I loved how Cohen concealed his favorite body part with an obnoxiously long black bar, while only mounds of flesh concealed his companion’s privates.
(An aside: If this movie had been released by a small independent company, there is no way on God’s green earth it would have gotten an R rating, allowing it to surprise box office watchers with its success.)
I also do not dispute how clever “Borat” is with its double-edged humor, but the problem is, one edge is a lot sharper than the other. This is that rare film where the subtext (America’s racism, sexism, etc.) has been so thoroughly worked out, the text is not very funny. Even for an actor as talented and committed (in every sense of the word) as Cohen, there are only so many ways that one can be an innocent pig before the joke gets old.
I don’t know, maybe every other critic and I are reading far too much into all of this. So I fall back on Occam’s razor, the principle that says all things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the best one.
Critic James Berardinelli describes “Borat” as a marriage between Monty Python and Tom Green. I agree. But I hate Tom Green, even though I love Monty Python, so that leaves “Borat” somewhere in the middle, with a grade of C+, or, as Borat might say using a four-star scale, “high 2.5!”
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By SRCputt
November 8, 2006 3:23 PM | Link to this
So it is not threat to Airplane! as all time make laugh movie film? And Ringo isn’t the walrus?