When I walked into that late showing of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan I was hoping for something both offensive and hilarious for that is all I have heard about the film from media sources. None of my friends or my parents has dared to see it for some obvious reasons; however, in that crowded theater of about five total people including myself, no one really thought anything was funny. In the front row were two teenage girls who would giggle obnoxiously whenever something below the waist was mentioned about anyone and/or shown on Sacha Baron Cohen who plays the idiotic, anti-semitic, stereotype of a journalist. There were two other young men in the theater, most likely in college or had just graduated high school whom I expected to be busting their guts at most of the tasteless jokes, but rather just sat there and every once in a while I would hear “Oh jeese..” I almost stood up to the girls and guys asking “Why aren’t you laughing?! You’re the target audience!” I then realized that this movie really is just plain not funny.

The Borat hype has probably been going on for almost a year, generating the same amount of excitement and energy as did Snakes On A Plane, another film who’s main associative producers are those who surf the net and blog. I remember seeing the trailers for the film in theaters almost an entire year ago and feeling intensely excited. Throughout the past few months Sacha has been making appearances almost anywhere at anytime as his infamous character, Borat. I have only been let down a few times in my life, but never has a movie made felt so disappointed in the end result. I feel as if asking director Larry Charles and Cohen, “Is this the best you can do?” I would be personally be interested in their answer considering Michael Bay can make a better film, and if you are a regular reader you know how I feel about Michael Bay…

Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen) is a journalist who has been approached by the Ministry of Information of his country of Kazakhstan to travel to the “U.S. and A.” to study American culture, hence the title Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. The journalist sports a bushy black mustache, blue-gray suit, and almost Russian sounding accent. He’s traveling with his obese producer Azamat (Ken Davitian) and throughout the film the two duo travel across America and educate themselves about our differences from perhaps those who understand them the worst, the dumb, fat Americans we’ve all become. Things take a turn for the worse when Borat learns his wife has been killed and is now free to pursue the first woman he’s actually fallen in love with, Pamela Anderson. He intends to marry her and according to his culture, she can’t refuse…

I’m quite confident that it wasn’t entirely the work of Director Larry Charles that this film hit a new low when it comes to offending people. If you know me personally, you realize that one of my favorite sitcoms is Seinfeld. Larry Charles was a writer for Seinfeld and it just happens that he penned many of the classics:

“The Baby Shower”, featuring a dream sequence in which undercover agents shoot and kill Jerry for stealing cable
“The Library”, in which Jerry is hunted down for a 20-year overdue copy of Tropic of Cancer
“The Subway”, where George skips a job interview for a woman (played by Barbara Stock) he meets on the subway, who ends up tying him up and robbing him.
“The Heart Attack”, where George has an allergic reaction to an alternative medicine and literally turns purple.
“The Limo”, where Jerry and George are misidentified as neo-nazis.
“The Trip”, where Kramer is sought by police in connections to a serial killing.
“The Opera,” where Jerry and Elaine are stalked by a psychotic man with a love for Pagliacci,
“The Outing,” the episode in which Jerry and George are mistaken for gay lovers, popularizing the phrase “not that there’s anything wrong with that”

*courtesy Wikipedia.org

Though many of his plots carried a Hitchcockian vibration, they ended up being lighthearted and humorous enough as to not offend anyone (as well keep me buying the DVD sets). The ways things looked in the film to me was as if Charles wasn’t directing, but if Cohen was dragging him along with all his jokes, “let’s shoot this, let’s make fun of that, let’s make fun of them, do you think we can make them say that?” The film is so outrageous it was hard to tell who had the creative control, the director or the actual character of Borat. There’s more chaos happening on screen than waiting in line for a Playstation 3 at Best Buy.

All this chaos on screen is also definitely traceable back to the cinematographers who probably directly followed the vision of Borat (err.. hopefully the director), Anthony Hardwick and Luke Geissbuhler. Both Hardwick and Geissbuhler have worked on their share of films and have proved themselves to be at least decent cinematographers, but in Borat, it really felt as if they were forced over the edge when it came to making it look like a documentary. I find it very odd that in different parts of the film we see things through Borat’s camera crew, but at other times we feel as if we are there with the characters. Doesn’t this ruin what the filmmakers were going for?

One of the weakest elements in the film is that the screenplay was written by Dan Mazer, writer for Cohen’s Ali G Show. Borat has been featured in this show in previous years and now Cohen and Mazer had obviously attempted to take his character to the next level. Unfortunately, there really is nothing to the character than just a personality created by Cohen who has no dimension whatsoever and I find it somewhat humorous that those contacted by the producers to do interviews with Borat didn’t know that he is a fictitious character and ended up embarrassing themselves as he offended them. In a way, I sympathize with these people, they were expecting something and approached it with all seriousness and ended up being surprised and let down… Sounds like these guys and myself have something in common. The jokes are carried on way too long, and I found it a little disappointing that Borat didn’t question some stupid things we Americans do in our daily routines, but rather taunted civil rights, opposes homosexuality, and though Cohen is Jewish, he makes some anti-semitic remarks. I imagine at one time or another, Borat worked, but almost an hour and a half of all of this, one cannot help but groan.

Rated R for pervasive strong crude and sexual content including graphic nudity, and language.

Running time 84 minutes.