Movie Review-Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan/Ninth Entry

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is as much fun to say as it is to watch. British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, as the confused and uninhibited oaf of a reporter from Kazakhstan, fills up nearly every second of screen time in ways that get more and more and more outrageous. There are moments of Borat that are so thoroughly obscene that you'll wonder how in the world it managed to get an "R" rating. But even discounting those, this is a film that offends absolutely everybody. It will offend whites, blacks, gays, and straights. It will incense Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike. It will startle and shock Northeners and Southerners; liberals and conservatives; feminists and fundamentalists; bears and chickens. Borat even sparked a minor international incident over the summer when it became one of the topics of a summit between President Bush and his enraged Kazakh counterpart.My kind of movie.It's not hard to understand what has Kazakhstan's government so angry. Most Americans have probably never heard the name of this former Soviet satellite country, let alone could find it on a map—and Borat introduces it as a backward little hellhole in which automobiles are pulled by horse teams, rape is a cottage industry, and the national pastime is the annual "Running of the Jew" ("There you go, kids, crush that Jew chick before it hatches!"). It's a perfect third-world distillation of what most of us imagine countries with names like "Kazakhstan" to be like, which was probably Baron Cohen's point.But if Borat Sagdiyev's Kazakhstan is a parody of the actual place, the America he visits is very real. And that's because Baron Cohen, who from all reports hasn't stepped out of character in at least the last two or three years, has descended upon us under the pretense of being a genuine documentarian. The reactions of most of his interview "subjects", from a TV meteorologist who breaks down laughing as Borat unwittingly destroys his weather report to the genteel southern dinner hosts who eject him after he presents them with a bag of his own feces, are genuine, and often revealing of dark and ridiculous things lurking within our own national subconscious. Baron Cohen is nothing if not a provocateur: when "Borat" cons his way into singing the national anthem at a Dallas rodeo, he proclaims to the crowd Kazakhstan's solidarity with America's "War of Terror" (great applause) and cries "May George W. Bush drink the blood of every man, woman, and child in Iraq!" (more scattered, confused applause.) When he finally substitutes his own country's mock anthem to the tune of "The Star-Spangled Banner", the reaction is predictably angry. Borat gets a much friendlier reception when he allows himself to be converted at a Christian revival meeting; spiritually renewed, he vows to continue his journey with the help of "my friend, Mister Jesus!" My liberal friend kept elbowing me in the shoulder at the jokes involving "Premier Bush", but we were both laughing too hard to say anything.With all the confusion and anger Borat sows among his guileless targets, from former presidential candidate Alan Keyes ("a genuine chocolateface!") to a kindly Jewish couple whom a terrified Borat and his equally anti-Semitic producer, Azamat (Ken Davitian), believe to be bloodsucking shapeshifters, it's a wonder he lives long enough to make it to Los Angeles and Pamela Anderson, with whom he's fallen in love from an episode of "Baywatch". I won't reveal what transpires once he finally reaches her at a booksigning, except to suggest that it must have been staged. It must have. Baron Cohen got away with a hell of a lot, but there's no way he could have.... without.... well, see for yourself.Aside from a rather soft ending, the laughs literally do not stop coming from Borat. In fact, I'd strongly urge anyone with any sort of medical condition to consult their doctor before seeing it. You may have missed a hell of a B.O. opportunity by slashing the theater count, Fox, because this particular middle-America audience couldn't get enough of Borat. Not a very nice thing to pull on a guy who warned us his government would execute him if we didn't go to see his movie.