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Niice

"Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" is certainly a film unlike anything you have ever previously seen. Whether or not that is a good thing is a matter of opinion but judging by the audience at my screening it is an exceptionally good thing.

Borat is Sacha Baron Cohen, a British chap who has achieved international fame from his television show on HBO, "Da Ali G Show". In "Borat" he plays one of his characters from that show, a man from Kazakhstan, who is not the brightest bulb. The comedy lies in the fact that despite Borat's lack of supposed smarts, his portrayer, Cohen, is playing those around him like a cheap fiddle. He achieves this by having himself filmed with unsuspecting people, who while aware that they are being filmed with a video camera, really don't know that they are being "punked" to use the current vernacular, but don't confuse this with something like Ashton Kutscher's TV show. Borat isn't just surprising people, he's exposing the phony facades of people. As heavy and boring as that may sound, it is not. What it is, is a spectacle of wonderment of the people who inhabit the planet, especially America, or maybe more realistically, it is just showing us what we truly already know.

Borat is coming from his home country to learn our culture. That is the whole framework of the story. He manages to put himself into scene after scene with non-actors who have not a clue what is going on other than that they are on camera. Some are nice and well-meaning, like the folks that attempt to teach him etiquette or encounter him at garage sales. Others are far more insidious. What drives Borat, or more accurately Cohen, in this film, is his desire to expose the fact that anti-Semitism is every bit as rampant as it has ever been. People have just gotten better at hiding it.

But now I'm giving you the wrong impression. This is not a school lesson or something dry and stiff. It is instead a very funny and sometimes astoundingly funny romp across America. It begins in New York but quickly shifts to a cross country quest for Borat. The quest is caused by his seeing a photo of Pamela Anderson in "Baywatch". He decides that he will make her his wife and sets out to find her and wed her in California. He does this by buying a used ice cream truck and driving it through the heartland of America, a phrase that has never really had a meaning anything like it is supposed to have, a major point of the film. With him is his "producer" and fellow countryman, Azamat Bagatov (Ken Davitian). Bagatov is a rotund little fellow with a quick temper who shares the same love of naked man wrestling as Borat. Their wrestling scene is one of the most amazingly funny and odd spectacles you will ever have the privilege to experience. Davitian deserves an Academy award just for having the guts to appear totally nude with that physique.

There are far too many scenes that I am tempted to tell you about but that would only ruin it for you. Just go see it. Laugh, maybe learn a little, maybe not. In the end it's unimportant because one of the messages here is also a sad one. Those of us that can laugh at this are for the most part already somewhat okay. Some of those who will not find anything funny here are the ones who can make life unpleasant and at times downright scary. That is what drives Cohen and is also what makes him interesting and makes me wonder what trip he will take us on next time.