Exactly. It's kind of like tongue-in-cheek satire. It's not meant to offend, but make light of the awkwardness that I'm sure foreign people have when they come to a country like America. It reminds me of a humorous convo I had with a friend of mine from Puerto Rico I had when I lived in Florida. He came from a spanish-only speaking family, but when they moved to Florida, they had to learn english. He was telling me some of the humorous discussions he got into when he'd confuse words.
Local theater had all the promotional stuff for it, then then don't even have the damned movie for this weekend..
The characters SBC does, specifically Borat and Bruno, are designed to expose the prejudices of those he interacts with. A racist parades around in white sheets or has hatred in his heart for another race -- he doesn't go around speaking in broken English with a phony accent. Borat is comical -- if you want to see true ugliness pay attention to the reactions people have to the characters SBC plays. *That's* racist (homophobic, etc.) -- not some goofy and fake foreign character.
I disagree with "the movie not being racist" comments. Playing stereotypes is not funny and shows an utter lack of class and promotes ignorance. Myself being of eastern european descent, I personally view the "Borat" character as promoting nothing but racist misconceptions of Eastern Europeans as being generally racist, hard-headed, intolerant, technologically backward, anti-semitic, and treating women as second-class citizens (actually more inferior than animals, according to Borat). Borat, who is played by an actor of Jewish descent, does not have the right to pretend he's of a different background IF he chooses to insult that ethnicity or race, just like I don't have the right to to paint my face black and act like an african american AND play up to ignorant "hip-hop" "gangbang" steretotypes. Borat imitating eastern europeans is akin to when the Japanese and Chinese are continually insulted by white comedians who try to impersonate their accents while squinting their 'slanted' eyes. I doubt Sasha Cohen (Borat's real name) would appreciate a Palestinian Arab posing as a Jewish man and going around stereotyping Israelis as being anti-arab, cheap, and every other naive stereotype that ignorant idiots throw towards Jewish people. We should be promoting tolerance towards all backgrounds and that is something Borat does not do, period. Sorry for being political, but I've seen other minorities get offended on these message boards when a so-called 'innocent' remark was made about a certain background, race, ethnicity, sexual preference, etc., etc., so I felt I should get my two cents in... So NO I'm not missing the point about his humour. His humour would be funnier if he played his pranks without pretending to be of a certain race (ALI G was not funny either, IMO)...
that sound painful. i have traditional kazakhstan remedy, no? *spits in palm* i never got into ali g, but borat lurve me long time. bruno...ees okay, no?
Seen him on all the tv shows promoting this thing and not once have I thought what I was seeing was funny. If anything it was annoying to the point of wanting to cut myself.
Jus saw de moviefilm today an iss verry niice. Is scalding satyr of Americann culturre an is verry offenssive bud allso quite hillarrious. De mixturre of grones ant lafter iss right up my always. *smacks self* It's hard to type Borat-ese in a convincing way. Anyway, I liked it a lot. It is quite offensive, but dang hilarious and very pointed in its criticisms of American bigotry and ignorance. Idiocracy was the better movie, IMO, but Mr. Cohen is very gutsy. I'll give him that. I'm sure the DVD will have tons of uncut stuff too, because they sure pushed stuff hard. Beware of who you go see it with though, much male nudity on display and outright offensive language and attitudes from both Borat and his interviewees.
Yeah they showed the "hotel chase" nude scene at SDCC...pretty much made me not really want to see the movie if that was the best they had to show...
I absolutely can not stand his Ali G character. Completely annoying and not funny. However, his Borat character is hysterical.
There were some good laughs in the movie. The hotel scene is something I'd like to forget as soon as possible. You couldn't pay me to do what Borat did in that scene.