Borat


Conclusion: not good. Grossly funny yes, but, despite all the hot reviews, not worth watching. However, I admire Sacha Cohen's genius, not for highlighting the "underbelly of America", but for belying the underbelly of America's self-loathing film critics. Very clever.

Film critics have almost universally praised this film, showing the true prejudices of Americans. However, except for some stone-drunk frat boys, not a single dupe in this movie uttered a racist or sexist remark: it was all Borat. However, it did highlight some cultural differences between Southerner and East Coasters. Uniformly, the Northerners were blunt and rude to to the coarse, seemingly dimwitted foreigner journalist they encountered, while the Southerners were exceedingly polite, in a live-and-let-live fashion. Of course, when their goods were damaged, they demanded payment, albeit without much cussing!

Yet, American film critics saw this movie as uncovering American prejudices: "we still have a long way to go", lamented one critic. From where, I ask? From critic's inability to deconstruct staged and highly edited filming?!

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Posted: Tue - November 21, 2006 at 02:02 PM

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