Borat

ROTFL, just plain ROTFL. At times I was doubled up with laughter, luckily I was sitting next to the aisle. I had thought that with my tooth extraction in the afternoon, it would be a great evening to sit in a movie instead of talking with people. Turns out laughing hurts like Hades when you've had tooth 47 extracted, but I just couldn't help myself, it was so funny.

Of course, you don't take Borat seriously - the reaction of the others is the point of the whole thing. How do people react to someone acting completely different than you would expect, who does not seem to know how we organize our lives? That was funny - and shocking as well.

Borat does not leave any potential target group unscathed, it seems: Jews, Muslims, handicapped, women. And with his outrageous comments he provokes his communication partners into agreeing with him, into going even further. He lays bare the undercurrent of anti-X sentiment that is there and makes it obvious to all. I feel the anti-woman and anti-foreigner sentiment very strongly, but can never seem to make it clear, people say that I am always imagining things. When I hear these drunken USC students talking about women, that is exactly what I keep sensing.

Some of the scenes are so precious because the cut to the quick on typical American behavior rules. The dinner party is so chock-full of scenes that I could barely watch it: misunderstanding that the retired guy is retarded; telling the pastor that his wife is ugly; politely asking to go to the bathroom and then bringing the purported results to the hostess, wrapped in the bathroom guest towels that no other guest touches (the look on the hostess' face when she understands what is in the towel is precious); and the finale in which the prostitute he invites shows up at the door and the pompous people suddenly have to leave.

The prostitute comes across as one if the few real people in the film - she has no pretentions, no facade to keep up. She's just the way she is.

I wonder if the Pamela Anderson scene was arranged with her permission, or if they just surprised her. When we got home in the evening there was a show on TV about some of the people in the movie who are currently taking Sacha Baron Cohen to court because they came across as very nasty people. The problem is, they all signed release forms before the filming. Not necessarily for the specific film and understanding that Borat is just a made-up figure, but they signed a release. And these have stood up in court up until now. The TV show also interviewed a Jewish filmmaker who found "Borat" very funny, especially as he seems to be speaking Hebrew most of the time - sounds like Kazakh to me!

My only regret is that there was only one short scene with the green bathing thong :) The naked fight that Borat gets into with his producer over a picture of Pamela Anderson is quite funny, although the little black box "protecting" the private parts is quite irritating.

The credits are all done in "Russian" with overtitles, at the very end it is given a rating of "3", not for children under 3 (of course, this is R in the US).

The Kazakh government was supposedly unhappy at first with the portrayal at first and was looking in to legal options, until someone realized what a great advertising opportunity this is - so now you can book a trip to see the real Kazakhstan!