A: No.
It was pretty good though.
And considering that this film was even more hyped than the last ginormously anticipated comedy, 2004's Napoleon Dynamite, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is still able to deliver some original, unexpected, laugh-out-loud moments. But lots of movies do that... so what makes this one so hugely successful (even if not 'the funniest')?
*Note* Other movies have gone here before. In fact, any of the jokes or stunts could be found in: a film by Trey Parker and Matt Stone (South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut [1999], Team America: World Police [2004]), or either one of the Jackass movies. I might also add that you could find the uber-revealing, common-conservative-dissecting interviews found in Borat in any of Michael Moore's films, but having already referenced him in one of my previous entries I will abstain to keep you from thinking I'm partial to left wing loonies...
What Borat has over others like it is a classic Hollywood foundation in a character, a goal-oriented hero character even, who we get to follow on mission that's chronological, with cause and effect events that change said hero along the way. The Jackass pranksters don't have the central, developed character, or the story that leads from one scene to the next. The South Park/Team America movies do have this, but I think I realized this weekend how much their medium is affecting them. It's not a medium that the general public respects.
A friend asked me how Borat was after I had seen it Saturday night. I told them it was much like a South Park episode. She asked me next, "Well, but is it better because it's not animated?" I had no response. For me, there was no judgement to make between two films if the qualifying difference is animated vs. non-animated. But then I thought about it and I started to understand the question more (and more, I'm sure than the asker intended).
The creators of South Park do have a lot of my respect. They address more issues with that show than they are given credit for. Because their shows are animated, they do a lot more than would be possible, both physically and economically in a live action show/movie, and they can get away with a lot more socially and politically as well. Even after shows like The Simpsons, The Family Guy, Futurama, Beavis and Butthead, Drawn Together, etc., the cartoon medium still carries with it some sort of child-like innocence, and isn't judged seriously as a result (...and is allowed to be aired by major networks... Can you imagine seeing the spousal and child abuse (just one example) found in these shows to be allowed on camera [live action show], let alone in prime time?). This loose judgement can, of course, be a double edged sword. A risk of using a cartoon to make cultural statements is that your messages will be passed off as trivial (as is your medium). An animated feature can go further over the line than its live action equivalent, but there are still things that are being said by these 'adult cartoons' that could be appreciated by a larger audience. It might even be that the cartoon medium is a crutch for these popular film and TV writers. They can always fall back on their medium/genre and say, "We're only joking!" if they purportedly go too far.
I have supposed that the comedy genre suffers generally (not just with animations) from its apparently inherent triviality, but there has to be a compromise somewhere (between content and entertainment) to get people into the theatres.
Get people into the theaters, Borat did. As Borat, Sacha Cohen brought together the documentary/mockumentary interview aspects, the crazy stunts/pranks, as well as the social/political demi-objectives of films in the same vein, along with a central character (with goals) and a story/plot (in which he challenged/reevaluated those goals) that the audience could relate to. As for the messages carried by this film, it's up to the masses of people that saw Borat to decide how much of this comedy is just a joke.
I'm definitely out of gas on this one, but I thought it would be terribly appropriate to end the post with a cartoon. Enjoy.
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan gets 3/5 stars.
1 comment:
Hmm ... I experienced no hype pre-Napolean. That seemed to me like far more of a sleeper hit than nothing-but-hype. In fact, didn't it even fail to have an initial wide release?
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