CS Weekly Archive > Weekend Read > 11/06/06

So Niiice!!!! I Like!

By jeff goldsmith

After months of Internet hype, Borat hits the screen and proves to be the funniest film of the year. Delivering a welcome shot in the arm to the mockumentary genre, creator/writer/actor Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat runs amok across America, both as a documentarian sent to study the USA and a man in search of his one true love—Pamela Anderson.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make

Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Sacha Baron Cohen & Anthony Hines & Peter Baynham & Dan Mazer
Story by Sacha Baron Cohen (also creator and star) & Peter Baynham & Anthony Hines & Todd Phillips

Borat Sagdiyev (Sacha Baron Cohen), Kazakhstan's number two journalist, has been sent by the Kazakh Ministry of Information on a journey through America in hopes of documenting what makes this country so great. Armed with a rarely seen camera crew and his clueless documentary producer Azamat Bagatov (Ken Davitian), Borat sets out to explore America. On Borat's journey through America we're treated to both unscripted and scripted comedic setups, ranging from Borat feeding a US congressman cheese made from his wife's breast milk, to joining a gay pride parade, to attempting to face his fears of the various minorities not found in his home country. But Borat's ultimate goal, which adds direction to his road trip, remains his quest to hunt down and marry TV star Pamela Anderson -- whether or not she's interested in him.

Borat is a character-driven comedy that represents the end result of Baron Cohen's creation of the Borat character some eight years ago in his UK TV series Da Ali G Show (the show also ran on HBO here in the States). The persona of this clueless journalist from Kazakhstan visiting the USA easily fits into the tried-and-true "fish-out-of-water" comic archetype. Borat bumbles through interviews, failing to understand the simplest of American ways while displaying an innocently racist persona and gently trampling across the boundaries of political correctness.

Baron Cohen's strong sense of character caught the attention of comedy director Jay Roach (Austin Powers), who saw the potential to expand Borat to film, staging scenes on a larger scale than had been done on the TV show while still retaining the TV show's improvisational nature (one of the elements that makes Borat such a success). Initially, Todd Phillips (School for Scoundrels) came on to direct the film. Phillips allegedly quit the project when he realized that the shoot was going to be more intense than he'd signed up for, after filming a scene at the Kroger/Valleydale Stampede Rodeo in Salem Virginia, where Borat sang the Kazakh national anthem to the tune of the U.S.A.'s anthem but with lyrics like, "Kazakhstan is the greatest country in the world. All other countries are run by little girls." Not surprisingly, he was booed out of the stadium. When Phillips left, Seinfeld writer and Curb Your Enthusiasm director Larry Charles was brought on to take over production.

The finished film is the result of Charles coming in to help Baron Cohen and the other writers to achieve their unique vision of the film, which includes everything from staged stunts to a hilarious scripted storyline of Borat falling in love with Pamela Anderson and road-tripping across America to stuff her in his traditional Kazakh wedding sack to marry her. The element is lightly peppered into act one as Borat discovers Anderson by seeing Baywatch on TV, and revisited later when Borat buys a collectible Baywatch book which he treasures. This prop is a key element to one of the film's most hilarious scripted set pieces, igniting one of the most absurd and ridiculous onscreen (naked) battles in film history, between Borat and his producer Bagatov. Meanwhile, the subplot of Borat's search for his bride links the film's stunts together as Borat continues his cross-country trek. Baron Cohen and Charles did an amazing job on this and other scripted sequences and deserve credit for making sure to interweave scripted material into a seemingly unscripted film.

Borat also mocks racism, simply by taking it to extremes. It's easy to be appalled by Borat's offensive attitudes toward African Americans, Jews, and other minorities -- yet, Baron Cohen has actually flipped racial stereotypes on their head. Borat acts as if many of the most unbelievable stereotypes were reality, such as his medieval version of anti-Semitism where he believes that Jews can turn into cockroaches. In a sequence where Borat finally stumbles across a real elderly Jewish couple, the film becomes both offensive and hilarious as we see Borat's fear of Jews materialize before him in the silliest of set pieces. Baron Cohen's no-holds-barred Lenny Bruce style to the subject matter includes the film's best in-joke: when Borat and Bagatov are supposed to be speaking in their Kazakh tongue they're actually speaking Hebrew (Baron Cohen was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household).

Borat is hilarious, pushing the boundaries of the mockumentary genre with staged and scripted sequences that form the spine of the true comedy within this supposedly unscripted film. Sacha Baron Cohen and Larry Charles use Borat's fish-out-of-water character to create a memorable and hilarious film that excels on both intellectual and physical comedy levels.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

20th Century Fox
Rated R; 84 min.

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Jeff Goldsmith is senior editor for Creative Screenwriting Magazine and serves as the Los Angeles Events Coordinator in charge of the Creative Screenwriting screening series.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan courtesy 20th Century Fox

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