To my fellow 2004 UO Cohort - see this movie. It is hilarious - one of the funniest, most irreverent movies I have ever seen. Smart and funny - not seen very often other than on the Daily Show or the Colbert Report.
To anyone else, especially Pentecostals or Republicans, don't see it. Or if you do, wait until it comes out on video and have someone fast forward through the objectionable parts. They are not merely objectionable; they are downright offensive. REALLY offensive. I agree with the reviewer in the link I added above that if some of the scenes had been filmed in a mosque rather than an evangelical Christian campstyle meeting, there would have been a huge outcry - it's really quite bad, but it's his prerogative to poke fun at anyone he wants to.
To be fair, Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen, aka the gay French race-car driver from Talladega Nights) doesn't merely make fun of Republicans and Pentecostals, he also makes fun of feminists, New Yorkers, Southerners, Baywatch and Pamela Anderson, gypsies aka Midwestern yard sale woman, Frat boys, homosexuals, Kazakhstan, black people (sort of - he's nicest to them), white people (when they react to him acting like a black guy), and JEWS. Especially Jews. Jews in Kazakhstan are portrayed as large ugly ogres that run through the streets trying to kill innocent Kazakhs. So it really is quite the free-for-all but I am surprised that there isn't as much angst about this movie as I would have expected based on its content. After all, Mel Gibson nearly got nailed to the wall (no pun intended) for Passion of the Christ, and this is a lot worse.
My favorite line: "We support your war of terror!!" And everyone at the rodeo cheers verrry loudly.
Runner up: "Pamela Anderson, will you marry me?" "No thanks."
Second runner up: "We should go back to New York! At least there won't be any Jews there!"
3 comments:
Between the half hour when I published this post and when I came back to update a link, some weirdo posted some long comment about voting for the good guy Republicans in 2006 (the Newt Gingrichs and Condi Rices of the world) rather than the fundamentalist "bad Republicans" that want to subordinate us to the Church and Pope, also represented by such evil Presidents as JFK, Carter and Clinton. Say what? Anyway, it's gone now, but it was odd. Very odd. And why was it posted on my Borat review?
I was disappointed by the movie. There were good parts and the rodeo I think was the best part because after he gets the crowd cheering with the comment you mentioned, he pushes them to see the extremes they Americans will go to to kill terrorists. His next comment: "May George Bush drink the blood of all Iraqi Men, Women and Children" got less cheers. By the time he says "may the US destroy Iraq so that not even one little lizzard is left alive" hardly anyone was cheering and they were all looking at each other. Good for him for pushing the envelope and throwing our stupidity, racism and hatred back in our faces.
Yeah - that's why I liked the movie, even though there were definite moments when you were thinking - okay, that's enough. But the rodeo thing was fantastic, as was the southern dinner party and how rude they got when the black prostitute showed up. Racism, sexism, any ism you can think of, there are plenty of people around who still represent the worst parts of our society.
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