Borat

[Jovan]

I saw in theatres... it was very hilarious. It's hard to explain why, but even the nudity somehow made it even funnier. Most of the audience was HOWLING in laughter, except for a couple right in front of us. I wouldn't be surprised if they left halfway through.

My mother rented it on DVD, and I gave her fair warning. She thought it was funny, but got the impression that Sacha is an "@$$#0!3" for what he did "to" people. Personally, the way I see it, he didn't actually harm anyone. Humour like Punk'd and other such shows doesn't appeal to me, because what they do to people is actually pretty messed up. [huh]

Apparently a group of Kazakhstanis have been upset over the portrayal of their country. I think they need to get a sense of humour. I mean, just look at how our neighbours up north and over the sea portray the US in comedy! It's all in good fun.

 

[Hammelby]

I saw it. I was in tears at times, others were a bit flat.
The wrestle in the hotelroom cracked me up!

Also funny when the producer is dressed up like Hardy.. and wiggled his little fingers at his hat

 

[mikepara]

Cringe...

What a horrible but howl of a movie. I just watched this! Funny thing is after all he got upto the cops only busted him really for looking foreign and driving about.

Bet that black guy at the convention hurt him off camera!

Most of the unwary came off worse than SBC. I only felt sorry for the nice jewish couple who came over as really nice and the Civil war antique guy! but hell your antiques are cheap! He wrecked half the shop and it was only $400 odd...Oh god that 'wife' Cheese, how he never puked I don't know.

 

[Jovan]

Well, obviously she was a hired actress. That or she was hired for the movie's end scenes AFTER being picked up by him.

 

[mikepara]

Nah,

If that was in reply to my post Jovan, I meant the bit where he gives the politician some cheese saying its traditional before a meeting to share cheese then says it was his wifes Breast milk cheese after he's chomped on it.

 

[Jovan]

Oh, that. That was pretty disgusting...

 

[moustache]

I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone.Pardon my non-comedic strain right now,but i didn't find this movie funny at all.I like my comedies,but this was,as stated above,a raw and raunchy movie.Just not for me.

JD
Vancouver,Wa

 

[Lincsong]

Wassup vanilla face???lol

 

[Fletch]

Borat is predictably unpredictable. Seeing him on YouTube was enough for me. What he is, is "reality comedy": everything depends on people taking him seriously. That's difficult to do when you are a superstar everyone knows is playacting.

 

[Feraud]

Netflix just put this into the mail for delivery to me.
Now if I can only get through the plodding Good Shepherd...:eusa_doh:

 

[RAF Man]

Borat - Sacha Baron Cohen

Sacha Baron Cohen I can only cope with in short sketches, but I am not really that amused by Borat at all.
His famous "comedy" programmes in the UK were supposed to poke fun out of certain members of the community, who dressed in labelled sportswear and talked in this slightly immature, retarded (if I can say that) un-English way, but ultimately he became revered himself and then imitated by those and others all the more, to the point where half the kids think it is "cool" to just talk like that all the time.
If "Borat" were a genuine Kazakstani, then it might appear a little more amusing, but probably not to a national of that country. Knowing he is of West London Jewish extraction, and makes fun out of unsuspecting targets makes it less amusing to myself.
Afterall, it is the easiest thing in the world to make a fool out of someone when they are least expecting it, and takes absolutely no skill at all. Pranks played on them, when they have not consented to any possible wind-ups (as the UK shows were all based on this type of comedy) well it just isn't an even playing field, and that kind of humour is just cheap, tasteless and one-sided.
His remarks (and joke) on an American TV chat show after and about 911 were certainly not what any American or civilised citizen of the world wanted to hear, and I believe the audience said as much and I as a Brit was not very proud of him or what he said.
As you can guess I am not one of his biggest fans.

 

[Twitch]

Saw it last nite via Netflix. We got laughs out of it. It was a campy enterprise like Blair Witch, apart from the norm in its concept. One thing for certain they'll never be a Borat 2 since everybody is onto the scam.

The wierd thing is that we must acknowledge is that there are people like that in other parts of the world for real. This guy simply poked fun at the obvious.[huh]

 

[Fletch]

Sacha Baron Cohen I can only cope with in short sketches, but I am not really that amused by Borat at all.

Wawawiwa, high five! At least there are a few willing to admit that the latest comedy hype phenom is not the funniest thing since the dawn of pie meets face.

 

[Miss Neecerie]

I just watched this...finally...(little behind the times ..me)..

Mildly funny yes...hysterical no. Sad to say Ali G is much funnier to me.

Then there is the whole deal with his producer/sidekick speaking Armenian the whole way through the film. Totally distracting actually understanding what one of the two guys is saying, but not the other one....

 

[Shaul-Ike Cohen]

Well, I got the Ivrit part, and only recognised the Armenian… Still a funny thing.

 

[luvthatlulu]

When someone can walk into a gun shop in America, ask the question, "What would you recommend in order to kill a Jew?" and get a straight-faced answer without so much as a blink of an eyelash, I think making fun out of unsuspecting targets makes the film even more interesting, if not amusing, to me.

Mr. Cohen uses his comedic talent to make otherwise very serious points thoughout the film. Whenever we can stop laughing at his antics, we should consider thinking about what he has revealed to us about ourselves, too.

 

[Edward]

Most of the unwary came off worse than SBC. I only felt sorry for the nice jewish couple who came over as really nice and the Civil war antique guy!

Actually, the antiques guy i assumed was in on the whole scam - I just didn't buy how calm and unflapped he was about the whole thing. Then again, maybe he figured these people could afford to pay for damages, and had a 12 gauge below the counter to ensure they did.

The wierd thing is that we must acknowledge is that there are people like that in other parts of the world for real. This guy simply poked fun at the obvious.[huh]

See, there's the rub. I don't believe for a minute that Khasakstanis were his target at all. My firm belief having watched this character is that the real targets were those who would due to their own prejudices simply accept him as being for real rather than a ludicrous stereotype, and act accordingly.

His famous "comedy" programmes in the UK were supposed to poke fun out of certain members of the community, who dressed in labelled sportswear and talked in this slightly immature, retarded (if I can say that) un-English way, but ultimately he became revered himself and then imitated by those and others all the more, to the point where half the kids think it is "cool" to just talk like that all the time.

There's little as subjective as comedy, eh? It definitely is a difficulty that characters intended to be laughed at rather than with all too often get adopted as heroes by those who don't get the joke. SBC is far from the first to have faced this - it happened with Tony and Gary (Men Behaving Badly) before that, and Alf Garnett before that again. Character comedy must be very frustrating at times when some in the audience miss the point so completely. Says a lot more about them than the comedian, though.

If "Borat" were a genuine Kazakstani, then it might appear a little more amusing, but probably not to a national of that country. Knowing he is of West London Jewish extraction, and makes fun out of unsuspecting targets makes it less amusing to myself.

See, that's where I differ. The point of it to me is that he is parodying Western prejudices and stereotypes by presenting this Khazakstani character who conforms so well to them, as well as using it to expose other prejudices - see, for instance, the infamous "Throw the Jew down the well" sequence from the TV show. There's also no way SBC would get away with Borat's anti-semitism were he not Jewish himself.

Afterall, it is the easiest thing in the world to make a fool out of someone when they are least expecting it, and takes absolutely no skill at all. Pranks played on them, when they have not consented to any possible wind-ups (as the UK shows were all based on this type of comedy) well it just isn't an even playing field, and that kind of humour is just cheap, tasteless and one-sided.

Well, I understand that some folks might have that attitude when it comes to Beadle type stuff, but I'm not so sure that it can be blanket applied when it comes to something like Borat. In my opinion, the only people who came off badly were the likes of the roadtrip fratboys, who exposed themselves as hideous misogynists and racists - all SBC did was give them enough rope to hang themselves.

His remarks (and joke) on an American TV chat show after and about 911 were certainly not what any American or civilised citizen of the world wanted to hear, and I believe the audience said as much and I as a Brit was not very proud of him or what he said.

I didn't catch exactly what he said, but I can imagine. Without necessarily suggesting that I would have thought it a good idea or amusing, I would lean to the view that it's likely again here he was parodying a popular stereotype held in the west about those from the Middle East and their reaction to 9/11. Probably not his smartest move, not least given that so many people would not have understood what the intended target was, and in any case so many confuse unacceptable comments about 9/11 with critique of the so-called "War on Terror." Some things are simply not wise to relate any humour whatever to.

It did strike me a lot of times throughout that film, though, that that guy must have absolute balls of steel, to put it bluntly. The stunt he pulled with singing the words of the Khazakstani anthem to the tune of the US anthem. Whether or not you found that funny or acceptable, he had to have some nerve to pull that one in front of that sort of an audience!

 

[Dr Doran]

When someone can walk into a gun shop in America, ask the question, "What would you recommend in order to kill a Jew?" and get a straight-faced answer without so much as a blink of an eyelash, I think making fun out of unsuspecting targets makes the film even more interesting, if not amusing, to me.

Mr. Cohen uses his comedic talent to make otherwise very serious points thoughout the film. Whenever we can stop laughing at his antics, we should consider thinking about what he has revealed to us about ourselves, too.

I'm not sure if I agree with your interpretation. I worked in customer service for years and years and I heard it all. After a long time, I made a point of refusing to react with outrage no matter what the customer said, and giving a matter-of-fact answer to questions that may have been from an insane person or someone putting me on. I stopped trying to figure it out because I simply didn't care, and acting slightly dumb and treating everything matter-of-factly worked well. That is how I interpreted the gun shop owner. He was just trying to make a sale.

 

[HadleyH]

I am not really that amused by Borat at all
As you can guess I am not one of his biggest fans.

I tried to like him but nothing doing

Boring Borat

Sorry Borat [huh]

 

[Dr Doran]

Not to be too PC (I did laugh and get enjoyment out of the film), but have you all heard about the inhabitants of that village he pretended was in Kazakhstan? It was in some impoverished post-Soviet Slavic country like Moldova. Some of those villagers were pretty conservative Christians and for him to be putting the small rubber fist-toy on the stump of that man missing an arm was extremely offensive to them when they figured out what it was. A reporter showed the film to the villagers. They were incensed. Moreover, they do not have a "kill the Jew" festival. That was Borat's invention.

The over-the-top anti-Semitic portrayals in the movie are curious. Can it be that Cohen is really that paranoid? On a meta-level one can see it as a humorous take on Jewish fear of anti-Semitism. Borat the anti-Semitic village idiot who speaks Polish, played by a Jewish Brit named Cohen. Both in the original TV show and in the film, in addition to some Hebrew, Cohen spoke Polish. "Dzien dobry! Jak sie masz!" Steven Sailer in the magazine American Conservative didn't like the film, and called it a long, ugly Polish joke.

One can just as easily make the argument that the film's more subtle "meaning" is a look at the paranoia that a Jewish person (Cohen) has about the allegedly ubiquitous, allegedly extreme nature of Slavic and American anti-Semitism ... if so, it is Cohen making a joke about his own people as much as about Slavs and Americans. Or perhaps he was unaware of this dimension of his own film ... if so, the joke is on him.

All in all I have a limited capacity for cringe humor. I cannot watch Jackass. I found Da Ali G Show very depressing. I liked Borat all right, and my wife liked it too even though she is Polish and could have disliked it for the extremely ugly representation of Slavic post-Soviet village life, but I cannot say I will watch the sequel.