It was not pleasant to me, though there were cheerful moments

OH MY GAWD! I laughed so hard I peed my pants! This is one of the best comedies I have ever seen in theatre. I laughed from start to finish. ---- http://www.world-films.org/

Well, I found this film amazing... Borat, is an amazing film...this guy s sense of humour is great. I don t know the guy, i don t know his name neither his professional activities. I west to the cinema, i saw this movie and all i know is that people inside were laughing to death, ...but he is showing the real, 100% american culture... people are afraid, that guy has the talent to make you understand what u.s.a is...

well, i understand, that for someone who is jewish or kazakh...is a bit hard, ..but is not always easy to accept what is true...

Borat, i strongly recommend it, one of the best comedies-documentaries EVER MADE !!! go and see it guys..

Well, I found this film amazing... Borat, is an amazing film...this guy s sense of humour is great. I don t know the guy, i don t know his name neither his professional activities. I west to the cinema, i saw this movie and all i know is that people inside were laughing to death, ...but he is showing the real, 100% american culture... people are afraid, that guy has the talent to make you understand what u.s.a is...

well, i understand, that for someone who is jewish or kazakh...is a bit hard, ..but is not always easy to accept what is true...

Borat, i strongly recommend it, one of the best comedies-documentaries EVER MADE !!! go and see it guys..

I'll analyze your review. My comments are bracketed. 

 

"Now, I can't honestly say that "Borat" was the worst movie ever because, well, I didn't get through the entire movie. By the 40th intolerable minute of it, I walked out.

Let me say up front - I am no prude [<- Blatent Lie]. And while I am sensitive to racism and sexism in pop culture, I am not so sensitive that I can't enjoy it [really? then what's your problem with this movie?]. I enjoyed the South Park movie and laughed very, very hard through many of the songs [which are considerably more offensive, not that that should bother a so-callled non-prude]. I thought 'Team America: World Police' was funny, including the final monologue. I think Eminem is talented [Wow. Deaf and dumb.].

But Borat? Borat, and all the other characters done by the same actor, is garbage. Ali G is straightforward blackface [so?]. Borat, on the other hand, is Kazakhface [so?]. There seems to be a lot of buzz in the media about the brilliance of Borat [and well there should be]. This actor, Cohen, exposes the hypocrisy, the racism, the antisemitism, in America [yes]. I don't buy it [don't buy what? There was no noun to refer to other than "Cohen"]. The main target of Cohen's mockery is his own character [Nobody would get all upset if he had made fun of the Catholics]. It's clear in the structure and setup of every joke. It's not exposing US racism to have the Kazakh bring a bag of shit to the dinner table [yeah, but it's funny.]. Or to show the Kazakh washing his clothes in a pond in Central Park [same]. Or to show the two Kazakhs wrestling naked over a long period of time, ending up in sexual positions [OK, that part could have been cut out.]. It's basic scatological humor, cliche, no cleverness or wit or talent at all that I could see [then you're blind, too?].

The other thing was that it just wasn't funny [OK....What an ending. You should add a good follow-up sentence to complement your ideas, Justin].

You cannot critique a movie you have never seen, your tiny chimpanzee brain cannot comprehend the true awesomeness of what you have seen.

gayest review ever

*(of the entire last six months)

 

Seriously--it was funny.  He insulted everyone and everyone helped him along.  How much more beautiful can comedy get than when every single person is ridiculed and mocked?  Now THAT is equality. 

to be honest, i think cohen had a genuinely good idea early on with his comedy, as described in my comment below...  but after reaching success via ali g he's simply been shooting from the hip to fill his wallet.  i don't think he used his jewishness in a gross way at all starting out, and if he does now, it's simply because he has blanks to fill in on his way to the bank.  i don't take him seriously anymore.

i haven't seen borat and probably won't.  when i heard he was making a movie of that character, i feared it would depart from the spirit of the show and make the stereotype the center of the joke, like racists laughing at how ridiculous they think black people are.

 

however, ali g isn't blackface at all.  cohen has stated that the point of ali g is to show just how stupid the establishment thinks youth is.  the point is to show that people *expect* this behavior from "hip hop youth" or from "foreign people".  the borat segments on the ali g show constantly end up with people telling him, "we don't do that here," or "that's not allowed in this culture," ...as if they DO do that kind of thing "somewhere else" in the wild savagelands of eastern europe.  the point is exposing racism and disdain.

 

that's about 50% of the comedy, and the other 50% is cohen's comedic sense, which is often rather sharp.  i'm afraid to see borat...  because i think it will be 50% comedic sense, and 50% eastern european blackface...  what works for short segments on a comedy show may not have quite the same dynamic on film.

 

comedians like cohen tread a dangerous line...  not just the line between laughing at/with racists, but the line between important social commentary-comedy and nihilistic hatred of existence.  sarah silverman deals with racism about as directly as cohen, but i get the feeling from her standup that she basically gazes on despair, and wants to bring you there by showing you how (legitimately, genuinely) awful the world is.  i actually like her art...  but i can't with a straight face say there's anything positive about it.  sometimes cohen chumps this or that right-wing figure, and i can't shake the feeling that the comedian has forgotten his ostensibly enlightened motives and lapsed into pure spite. 

 

i'm sure the point of the movie borat is, however, to make money.

um... loosen up. 

He was letting Chomsky off the hook easy. I think he said somewhere that he actually admires Chomsky, so chances are he didn't really try to stand him up like he did with other people. But boy wasn' Chomsky real stiff. I am not surprised that Justin cannot appreciate Borat, or he wouldn't be writing his witless tripes on this blog. Some people really take their pseudo intellectualism too seriously. The fake left has really become the vanguard of neo puritanism aka political correctnes and nothing much.

Of course 'Borat' normalizes racism and its ironic equalization of 'primitive,' non-Western prejudice and 'modern,' North American prejudice is disingenuous at best.  Yes, Borat's ignorance is reflected in narrow-mindedness of many Americans who themselves are too foolish to see through his ruse.  But the stereotypes that he presents at every turn are never probed or challenged, except insofar as they are depicted as equally stupid.  And despite its supposed vulgarity the movie lacks the edginess or the outlandish satire that marks more subversive comedy.  What irks me most, however, is the manner in which Cohen present his own Jewishness as a crafty defense mechanism.  It seemed to me that the ultimate inside joke of the movie is that 'goyim' of all stripes are bigoted fools, but that Jews can employ their superior intellects to evade persecution and mock their oppressors in the process.  Gentiles, rich and poor, American and Kazakh, may threaten us, but we can dissemble and therefore triumph -- a survival strategy that the powers that be can certainly live with.

Sascha Baron-Cohen is very proficient when it comes to catching his unsuspecting comedic guinea pigs off guard, and though I haven't yet seen Borat because I really can't stand the volume to which the sound systems in all the movie theaters are turned up, I've seen and enjoyed every second of Baron-Cohen's HBO television series. However, he has absolutely no talent in premeditated, scripted comedy as evidenced by his unwatchable first attempt at a feature film, Ali G Indahouse. Larry David and Seth MacFarlane have nothing to worry about in that respect. I guess no one person can be good at everything. I saw the Chomsky interview too. It's a pretty uneventful interview, which is probably why it was never actually incorporated into an episode and was just packaged as a special feature on the DVD release of the series. I don't know if it was just me, but did it seem to you that Baron-Cohen was getting a little frustrated in the interview because Chomsky was able to find ways to give answers to Ali G's bizarre questions that were basically sensible and even sometimes informative? It was almost as if Baron-Cohen were ironically not smart enough to write questions that were truly stupid (e.g. it seems it never occurred to him that animals other than humans actually have forms of communication, so he thought any suggestion about other animals conversing would be taken as ludicrous).

How can it be an attempt to normalize racism, when he himself is Jewish?

More people need to appreciate the power of irony, and that laughing at the idiots of the world isn't all bad.

it is racism disguised as humour, I am afriad to say that the ridicule of this movie can bring laughter in many people. It is an attempt to normalize racism..

check out this awesome clip of one of his songs:

http://inhonor.net/videos/uped/fl_video.php?f_num=92500

 

Verse
In my country there is problem
And that problem is the Jew
They take everybody money
And they never give it back


Chorus

Throw the jew down the well (repeat line)
So my country can be free (repeat line)
You must grab him by his horns (repeat line)
Then we have a big party (repeat line)


Verse 3
If you see the Jew coming
You must be carefull of his teeth
You must grab him by his money
And I tell you what to do

Chorus

"I think m & m is talented".

OH yes, the biggest sexist jackass is ok to listen to.

BUT, a comedian who is obviously picking fun at parts of society that are very real is awful and shouldn't be watched.

Did you think possibly he was pointing to abu prison in Iraq when he had naked people end up in sexual positions? did you think that he's pointing out obvious cultural differences between our countries perhaps? six arabs were just kicked off a plane yesterday because some idiot father sent a note to the stewardess saying they felt uncomfortable next to these six arab religious men. (six arab men who probably were x-rayed and anally probed before being allowed into the flight area). so, i guess it would be wrong to do a comedy skit about those six men, or about the idiot americans who should be killed because they are so stupid. yes, that would be awful, since we can't talk about anything.

all we can do is listen to M & M, and hope his enlightening music and spirit make this world a better place. (note the sarcasm, moron. and please don't bother the public with rubbish anymore. sometimes you sound like an inteligent person).

Yes, it's all a Jooooooooish conspiracy.

 

F-ing idiot.

The Jews jokes were really not amusing..over all this movie was probably made to normalize the idea that arabs and muslims are somewhat ignorants.

Thanks for the review Justin.. I just downloaded the movie but did not see it yet.. If its bad, I have the consolation of not having paid for it..

How can you say it's the worst movie ever when you didn't see all of it?

Rolling Stone interviewed a few of the unwitting participants from Borat, among them one of the Veteran Feminists.  She thought that his jibes at the homophobia and anti-Semitism were much more successful than the hits at sexism in their "interview", but wished him well and said he's obligated to buy one of her sculptures.

I suppose a lot of it had a candid camera quality to it, and the streaking scene seemed rather "Jackass".  But funny is in the gut of the beholder.  You either laugh at scatalogical humor or you don't.  I laughed.