New Review! BORAT (2006, dir. Some Guy)

At LAST! The zeitgeist slips on the huge banana peel of poetic justice and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen FINALLY answers the burning questions still lingering in the American air. Are southern people racist? Do feminists have no sense of humor? Are frat guys drunk misogynists? Do black people use slang? Will an old Jewish couple insist you eat a pastrami sandwich? THANK GOD SOMEONE HAD THE COURAGE TO MAKE THIS MOVIE! OH THANK YOU BORAT! THANK YOU MR. COHEN, you comic genius! I would have gone to my grave NEVER HAVING HAD THESE STEREOTYPES CONFIRMED BY ISOLATED (possibly staged) INCIDENTS!

From the moment I saw him as Ali G in that Madonna video, I thought: "This guy is a poser." I never thought he was that talented and sitting through this film was like watching THE DAILY SHOW: THE MOVIE. I kept expecting/hoping someone was going to cut to Jon Stewart's half-apologetic, half-acerbic grin. At least then I would have a likable presence to ground my interest. This film is guilty of the highest crime, my cinephiles. It's lazy. It's an easy joke from start to finish. Oh. And I'm not a snob. I loved the first Jackass movie. I died laughing. There was a weird sort of integrity embedded in something so juvenile. Something so rooted in a balls-out attempt at sheer entertainment using one's self as the canvas.

Borat is not entertaining. Cohen isn't using himself as the canvas. He's using others. It's exploitative. I can get behind irreverence (Chapelle's Show or David Cross). I can get behind satire (Dr. Strangelove). I can get behind ingenious stupidity (The Jerk). I cannot get behind anti-humanism. This film is not anti-American. It's anti-people. It discounts the fundamental human struggle of every single person involved. This makes Borat just as inane as any of the other dick/fart joke movies Hollywood turns out every year. I don't see any difference between this film and a Farrelly Brothers movie except that Cohen wipes his sticky fingers over the hot button topics that left-wing intellectuals like to torture themselves over so they can sleep at night instead of feeling guilty about their trust funds.

It feeds directly into that guilt. A guilt I'm supposed to feel because I'm part of a (excuse me for saying it) really great and diverse country. Sure there are racists. There always have been. Sure we're in a crazy war we don't understand. Please check out the last 200 years of this country. I do not believe that the solutions to the problems we have with American culture are to be found in a film that baits people who work all day, lost children, possibly fought in some of those wars, campaigned for birth control, or practice a religious faith that is different from mine. This is not ground-breaking cinema. This is Johnny One-Note playing a sold-out crowd at Carnegie Hall.

Maybe I'm reading into it too much. Maybe I'm supposed to just be the "better bigot" you know, for the left, and see these people for who they "really" are: inbred, tight-assed, or uninformed idiots. But I don't. People are people. They always will be. And you don't provoke change by satirizing the innocent. The only thing Borat can definitively prove these people are guilty of is not being in on the joke. Can you blame them? They're the butt of it.

BOTTOM LINE: Whatever. It's funny. On television. Not in my medium.

To the critics praising it as some sort of political triumph, I say: Make no mistake. The ultimate goal of this film is to earn money. Twentieth Century Fox distributed Borat which means practically the entire gross will be going to Rupert Murdoch so he can make more episodes of Fox News. WAY TO GO, AMERICA!