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208.58.2.83
The Boston Globe:A comic put-on of awe-inspiring crudity and death-defying satire and by a long shot the funniest film of the year. It is "Jackass" with a brain. [Hey! I liked Jackass!]
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/11/03/kazakh_it_to_me/
The Weekly Dig:
In advance screenings, audiences have reacted to Cohen’s act with hysterical, out-of-control guffaws—or at least that’s what happened in oh-so-enlightened Cambridge and Boston. But I have to wonder: Will average dipshit Americans find this stuff funny when they see that they themselves are the butt of the joke?
Twentieth Century Fox seems to be considering this as well—for its opening, the movie was dropped from over 2,000 theatres to about 800. Although Cohen pulls no punches with his outrageous behavior, he and director Larry Charles (along with a gaggle of other screenwriters) have at least honed the film so that it will play to minimal attention spans.
Follow Ups:
Very funny in parts yes. Some parts that amused the audience left me completely unamused, for example 2 naked guys wrestling around.If it's assumed that this is all playing jokes on real people, I'm not at all sure that's right. There's no statement to that effect. At first, one may almost think the prostitute is really that, but it becomes quite clear she's scripted. And I think much else is scripted as well. Some of it is still hilariously funny. Not quite as much as I expected. The guy is quite fearless however. To the rodeo crowd- "May George W. Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq"- met with scattered applause and some other looks of disgust. I think that part was real.
still squirming I see.
s
Though it throws in some cheap laughs, the varying styles of comedy give the movie's pace a kinetic quality.I liked it.
He's funny, no doubt; and ballsy too but he relies on the good nature of his hosts to get close enough to reveal that they have biases and prejudices, etc; all the while ignoring the fact that they were nice enough and open enough to invite him into their homes, clubs, conversations and confidence.
Don't piss on my shoe and tell me it's raining.
He demonstrates how seemingly "nice" people can hold ugly repugnant attitudes we thought were only now held by rabid fanatics. The guy is a genius. The question is; how many must he dupe to find a real closet Nazi? (Many, I hope.) I love his Ali G embarrassing interviews with big shots who will go along with any raunchy drivel if they think it'll get them on TV. Pretty amazing. Of all the VIPs I've seen interviewed on his HBO shows, ex-SoS George Schultz was the only one I saw who had the balls to say it was BS and walk out.
I haven't seen the film yet (I plan to though) but I can see how many normal people could allow themselves to humor a "crazy" foreigner who is saying outrageous things just to avoid confrontation. How many of us have not spoken up when friends or relatives have said something off-color? Then, think what it would be like to confront someone who is ostensibly a foreign journalist - and a crazy and unpredictable one at that - in front of a camera crew. That's what I suspect most of the footage in the film shows; we obviously won't see the bulk of the material that didn't turn out to this comic's advantage. He wants to show the United States as a country full of fat bigotted idiots, and that is easy enough to do given the population of America is 300 million. Certainly, it would have been just as easy (if not easier) to do the same thing in England - a nation that is chock full of inbred bad-toothed rustics, skinheads and soccer holigans, and zenophobic nationalists. It's the easiest trick in the book of anti-American propaganda to find a few examples of what is even more commonplace in other countries and present it as somehow typical of the "American psyche".Sadly though, being the most powerful and prosperous nation on earth and taking unilateral (even though necessary) action in confronting radical Islamism leaves us open to resentment and jealousy from lesser nations, especially once-great empires like Great Britain that have fallen on hard times and have a burgeoning Islamist problem within their home territory.
Borat goads his subjects along with a specific agenda in mind, but they're still responsible for everything that comes out of their mouths. Does it really matter how pleasant a guy can be if he thinks genocide isn't such a bad idea? In that light, I have a hard time calling him "good natured." Take a look at the clip, linked below.-Anthony
But "Borat" ambushes plenty of people who don't think the Holocaust was a good thing.This part of the L.A. Times review of the movie echoes and better expresses my sentiments on his brand of comedy.
"But because Cohen is intentionally provocative, willing to mock whoever crosses his path, he ends up baiting the harmless and playing ordinary people for fools just because they are gullible and had the bad luck to run into him, and it's here that the laughter especially sticks in your throat. The car dealer who doesn't object when Borat makes anti-Gypsy remarks may not be a secret racist but simply someone who decided it was a mug's game to get further involved with an obvious lunatic. And the Southern dining society that gets mercilessly humiliated seems to have committed no sin worse than earnestness, credulity and hospitality.
With his corrosive brand of take-no-prisoners humor that scalds on contact, Cohen is the most intentionally provocative comedian since Lenny Bruce and early Richard Pryor, with a difference. For unlike those predecessors, there is a mean-spiritedness, an every-man-for-himself coldness about his humor. The one kind of laughter you won't find in "Borat" is that which acknowledges shared humanity."
Don't piss on my shoe and tell me it's raining.
...that DEA guy into discussing a spread of illicit drugs on the table before them. You could see in the poor guy's eyes the growing realization that something was sorely amiss but he *stayed in character* as the agent. No one got hurt by that, and it was a great impromptu performance on both sides.Word also has come that some of Borat was scripted/staged -- just as it's quite apparent Ali G. was.
clark
That's not a bad assessment, but I think the author and many others are taking Cohen's style of humor way too seriously. Can we be so prideful that we can't take a joke? Cohen's routine is a kind of acid test in that regard.Anyone can be made to look silly and I'm certainly no exception. Also, nobody with a decent foothold in the world is above being mocked... hell, I deserve it. Supposing a person like Cohen managed to pull one over on me, Mr. Innocent Nice Guy, well shame on me for being naive, but above all else I think I possess enough humility to laugh at myself for it. I suppose that a person who doesn't have that ability would probably despise Cohen's style the most.
I don't think laughing at ourselves is just important, it's necessary. We're all fairly ridiculous creatures... and anyone who doesn't think so it just itchin' for it!
-Anthony
It seems to me that anybody can take advantage of unsuspecting people (as in "Borat") or film people doing some of the most childish and stupid acts (as in "Jackass"). Is the paying audience that desperate for entertainment that they'll stoop so low to pay for this?
.
...to find this movie a cynical exercise in better-than-thouism. Which is also why it got the easy laughs in "oh-so-correct" Cambridge -- buncha snotnosed brats!clark
We agree.
making anti-Semitic remarks for laughs?
I wonder how an Arab, pretending to be Israeli and making anti-Arab jokes, would fare at the box office?
/
Grits: the other white starch!
It must be my age (almost 52) but like so many other of today's "in" things I don't get this guy (Sasha Baron Cohen). I've tried to watch his HBO "Da Ali G Show", nothing. I've seen trailers and some clips of "Borat" same effect, nothing. I can only attribute it to age. I don't like David Chappell or "Jackass" either.
I'm 58 and my only hesitation at seeing this in the theatre is that I'm afraid I'll piss my pants. I can't get enuf of his Borat character on the Ali G show. His bit of singing in the cowboy bar of "Throw the Jew Down the Well" still brings tears to my eyes. He is absolutely nuts!
...not near the fuddy-duddy you are!Although I've never seen Chapelle...
Did you at least enjoy The Forty-Year-Old Virgin? I went with a 70-y.o. friend and we laughed our fool heads off.
clark
Call me "fuddy-duddy" then because I didn't get much from "The Forty-Year-Old Virgin" either.
Well, perhaps you should try the Clinton approach to sex (sorry NOT sex) and seduction!
I occasionally got a laugh from Ali G but I think Borat is funnier.
Although his work does play straight down the line of racial stereotyping, I think that like Chapelle he puts emough spin on it to make it work. The only taboo is to not be funny.
Jackass? Exactly.
Nor did I and I walked out half way through.
s
One of the most genuine feel good things to hit the cinema in a long time.
Don't piss on my shoe and tell me it's raining.
a
That should make you feel pretty bad.
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