2006 comedy
Rating: 15/20
Plot: Borat, Kazakhstan’s number one journalist, is sent to America to film a documentary on what makes the country so great. He falls in lust with Pamela Anderson after catching an episode of Baywatch on a hotel television and sets out for Los Angeles to find her.
On the one hand, this makes the misanthropic half of me laugh more than anything else. Attacks on idiocy, brutal satire, jabs of irony. On the other hand, there’s something so hateful about a lot of this, and it’s often unnecessarily crude. On the one hand, I really love the interaction with the actual, unsuspecting masses–the rodeo crowd, the guy trying to teach Borat how to tell jokes, the gun store owner, the used car salesman. On the other hand, the Pamela Anderson plot is cheesy and low-brow and pointless. On the one hand, Cohen’s probably a genius and would have been deserving of a best actor nomination for this largely-improvised role. On the other hand, I really didn’t need to see his ass. I like Borat and I’ll likely see it lots more times and I look forward to seeing the new one with the gay character, but when I think about how good this movie should have been, it really annoys me. Channel it, Borat!
