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A one-joke Borat fails to shine on the silver screen
BORAT
Directed by LARRY CHARLES
Certificate 15
THIS is a film studios delight – a flick which wins column inches before any one has seen it because of it supposedly being racist, crass and tasteless.
Serious commentators have looked at Borat to decide whether this is some form of ironic statement, a cheap stunt of Bernard Manning-style jokes which aims low and hits lower or a harmless piece of fun in a world where political correctness has put strict limitations on what we are meant to find funny.
So how does Sacha Baron Cohen’s new feature film work?
Borat is his Tv presenter working for the Kazakhstan state channel, and he has travelled to the US to sell his country and also discover a little more about his hosts. He does so by travelling about, meeting disparate groups and then producing homophobic statements or simply disgusting jokes to prompt a reaction from those who share screen time with him.
The idea that the joke is on the people he interviews, and that Baron Cohen is sending up other people’s prejudices, occasionally holds true. But he does sail pretty close to the wind.
He has created an image of some former Soviet satellites which, with the expansion of the European Union and the usual ridiculous discussion about immigration, which often focuses on some Middle English fears that we are about to be swamped by Romanian benefit fraudsters, is pretty uncomfortable.
A large percentage of Borat’s target audience will perhaps not be enlightened enough to consider the nature of the jokes, and will consider it’s comic appeal on the level of ‘Here is a foreigner with a strange accent drinking horse urine! Aren’t those foreign types funny!’
But what is perhaps the most important question is whether the jokes are any good. Some are genuinely well crafted – he does a marvellous rendition of the American national anthem which is a good chortle while the reactions Borat gets in some of the situations he has contrived can also raise a giggle.
Others are not so good. Borat, as with Ali G, often falls back on sheer gross-out teenage crassness to raise a laugh, so bodily functions are always high on his joke wish list.
And the problem is this works as a sketch but not really as a full length film. It is essentially one joke long and after awhile it is a bit depressing to think how nasty human beings are to one another on the strength of deep rooted prejudices. |
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