I finally saw the Borat movie a few weeks ago and although I laughed pretty hard at parts of it, I must confess that it wasn't a great movie. I'm pretty much a movie snob, flicks like Fargo and The Fisher King and Memento are what turn me on. But occasionally, I love a good action flick or a miraculous sports movie or a stupid funny movie, some mindless drivel that plays with your emotions or makes you laugh for the sake of laughing.
But Borat was basically a bunch of skits Sacha Baron Cohen strung together. Some worked, some didn't. It started out in classic mockumentary format and every once in a while, you wondered if the people on the film really understood what was going on. I think some did and some didn't, as is evidenced by all the lawsuits Cohen was hit with when the movie went big.
Mockumentaries can be great. Look at Best In Show and Drop Dead Gorgeous, not to mention the classic This Is Spinal Tap. But this one didn't have that polished feel, which is actually what Cohen seemed to be going for. In my case, though, it just didn't work. Borat was almost a mockumentary with a Jackass kinda feel to it.
Where it did succeed was the cringe factor. I give it a ten here. The poop-in-a-bag presentation was jaw-dropping. The naked-balls-in-the-face scene made me pee my pants, literally. I had to stop the movie and change into some Depends. And even they weren't adequate enough.
Borat would've been great as a cable pay-TV special, Cohen is the king of his own brand of comedy. And there's no doubt he's developed a very loyal following. The man is funny. And he's good as what he does.
But he's not a movie writer, he's a skit writer. As long as you know what you're getting when you watch his stuff, there's no problem. When I sat down to watch Borat, I was expecting a movie and I didn't get one. I got a collection of skits cobbled together with the weak plot of Borat trying to meet Pamela Anderson so that he could marry her. In turn, that led to this poorly written blog review that wandered aimlessly, just like the movie. Made my point yet?