Release Date: July 10
Director: Larry Charles
Writers: Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Dan Mazer, Jeff Schaffer
Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen, Gustaf Hammarsten
Cinematographer: Anthony Hardwick, Wolfgang Held
Studio/Run Time: Üniversal Pictures, 83 mins.
Brüno is sharper, funnier, and more profane than Borat. Thank goodness.
Let’s get this clear right at the top: anyone who thought Borat was crass and unfunny would do well to stay away from the new film called Brüno by Sacha Baron Cohen and Larry Charles. The British comedian known for disappearing completely into his faux naïve characters has a new personality but the same strategy: Break the rules of decorum while the cameras are rolling to see how people react. His tactics as a flamboyantly gay, highly sexed fashion maven are even more brusquely offensive to genteel sensibilities than his Kazakh rube was. Delicate souls should steer clear.
Director: Larry Charles
Writers: Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Dan Mazer, Jeff Schaffer
Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen, Gustaf Hammarsten
Cinematographer: Anthony Hardwick, Wolfgang Held
Studio/Run Time: Üniversal Pictures, 83 mins.
Brüno is sharper, funnier, and more profane than Borat. Thank goodness.
Let’s get this clear right at the top: anyone who thought Borat was crass and unfunny would do well to stay away from the new film called Brüno by Sacha Baron Cohen and Larry Charles. The British comedian known for disappearing completely into his faux naïve characters has a new personality but the same strategy: Break the rules of decorum while the cameras are rolling to see how people react. His tactics as a flamboyantly gay, highly sexed fashion maven are even more brusquely offensive to genteel sensibilities than his Kazakh rube was. Delicate souls should steer clear.
- 7/10/2009
- Pastemagazine.com
TORONTO -- This year you are not going to find a more appalling, tasteless, grotesque, politically incorrect or slanderous film than "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." You probably won't laugh as hard all year either. For once it's true: Borat has to be seen to be believed. Like an exploding cesspool at a country club dinner. Or a strip show in a cathedral. You just might want to stay through the credit crawl too: The last shot is as funny as the first one.
Borat is a mockumentary revolving around one Borat Sagdiyev, a gangly, gray-suited journalist working for Kazakhstan's state-run TV network, who takes his mangled English and die-hard prejudices to America to make a documentary about life in the U.S. of A. Borat is the brainchild of British comic Sacha Baron Cohen, creator and star of HBO's Da Ali G Show. The director of Borat is one of the inventors of modern TV comedy, Larry Charles, whose sure hand here shows that he has moved on from Masked and Anonymous, his unfortunate first misstep in cinema.
Borat played to many empty seats at initial festival screenings last week. But in its final screenings, turn-away crowds showed up thanks to the buzz. Here amid all this serious, high-minded art, audiences were greedy for a movie where everything, truly everything, is inappropriate. Fox may have a hit with Borat.
The movie begins in Kazakhstan (with Romania doing the honors), where Borat shows off his native village and its traditions. This includes the Running of the Jew, where young men flee down a corridor of terror before an individual in a huge mask that brings together just about every anti-Semitic caricature into one horrible visage. Borat then proudly introduces his sister, "the No. 4 prostitute in all of country."
He brings to America a host of prejudices so ingrained as to offend everyone he meets. His interview with a group of feminists revolves around his belief that a woman's brain is the size of a squirrel's. He is terrified of homosexuals, yet blithely practices his homeland's manly customs of men kissing each other and wrestling in the nude.
Borat is accompanied by his obese producer, Azamat Bagatov (Ken Davitian), who can't understand why they are crossing the country in a purchased Ice Cream truck instead of doing the interviews scheduled on the East Coast. He doesn't realize that his colleague has discovered his true love while watching reruns of Baywatch on TV: Pamela Anderson. Because she lives in California, that is now the promised land. He means to marry her Kazakhstan-style, which requires a burlap sack.
On the road, Borat takes hip-hop lessons from black youths. He tries to purchase a gun to protect himself from Jews. (He buys a bear instead.) He draws cheers from a crowd at a rodeo by chanting, "May George Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq!" He invites a large prostitute to a dinner party of religious conservatives.
The high point -- which also is the low point -- comes when he and his producer get into a very physical fight in their hotel room over Anderson, which spills into the hall, an elevator, the lobby and finally a convention in a banquet room. They are both Buck Naked, which is not a pretty sight.
So, is Borat a modern-day version of those old Polish jokes? The movie will have its detractors and defenders, but it's pretty clear the satiric attack isn't on bigotry so much as its origins -- superstitions, traditions, ancestral animosities and beliefs in cultural and gender superiority, all firmly rooted in dire ignorance.
The weapon wielded by Cohen and Charles is crudeness. People today, especially those in public life, can disguise prejudice in coded language and soft tones. Bigotry is ever so polite now. So the filmmakers mean to drag the beast out into the sunlight of brilliant satire and let everyone see the rotting, stinking, foul thing for what it is. When you laugh at something that is bad, it loses much of its power.
BORAT: CULTURAL LEANINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN
20th Century Fox
One America/Everyman Pictures
Credits:
Director: Larry Charles
Screenwriters: Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham, Don Mazer
Producers: Sacha Baron Cohen, Jay Roach
Executive producers: Dan Mazer, Monica Levinson
Director of photography: Anthony Hardwick, Luke Geissbuhler
Production designer: David Maturana
Costumes: Jason Alper
Music: Erran Baron Cohen
Editors: Peter Teschner, James Thomas
Cast:
Borat Sagdiyev: Sacha Baron Cohen
Herself: Pamela Anderson
Azamat Bagatov: Ken Davitian
MPAA rating R
Running time -- 83 minutes...
Borat is a mockumentary revolving around one Borat Sagdiyev, a gangly, gray-suited journalist working for Kazakhstan's state-run TV network, who takes his mangled English and die-hard prejudices to America to make a documentary about life in the U.S. of A. Borat is the brainchild of British comic Sacha Baron Cohen, creator and star of HBO's Da Ali G Show. The director of Borat is one of the inventors of modern TV comedy, Larry Charles, whose sure hand here shows that he has moved on from Masked and Anonymous, his unfortunate first misstep in cinema.
Borat played to many empty seats at initial festival screenings last week. But in its final screenings, turn-away crowds showed up thanks to the buzz. Here amid all this serious, high-minded art, audiences were greedy for a movie where everything, truly everything, is inappropriate. Fox may have a hit with Borat.
The movie begins in Kazakhstan (with Romania doing the honors), where Borat shows off his native village and its traditions. This includes the Running of the Jew, where young men flee down a corridor of terror before an individual in a huge mask that brings together just about every anti-Semitic caricature into one horrible visage. Borat then proudly introduces his sister, "the No. 4 prostitute in all of country."
He brings to America a host of prejudices so ingrained as to offend everyone he meets. His interview with a group of feminists revolves around his belief that a woman's brain is the size of a squirrel's. He is terrified of homosexuals, yet blithely practices his homeland's manly customs of men kissing each other and wrestling in the nude.
Borat is accompanied by his obese producer, Azamat Bagatov (Ken Davitian), who can't understand why they are crossing the country in a purchased Ice Cream truck instead of doing the interviews scheduled on the East Coast. He doesn't realize that his colleague has discovered his true love while watching reruns of Baywatch on TV: Pamela Anderson. Because she lives in California, that is now the promised land. He means to marry her Kazakhstan-style, which requires a burlap sack.
On the road, Borat takes hip-hop lessons from black youths. He tries to purchase a gun to protect himself from Jews. (He buys a bear instead.) He draws cheers from a crowd at a rodeo by chanting, "May George Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq!" He invites a large prostitute to a dinner party of religious conservatives.
The high point -- which also is the low point -- comes when he and his producer get into a very physical fight in their hotel room over Anderson, which spills into the hall, an elevator, the lobby and finally a convention in a banquet room. They are both Buck Naked, which is not a pretty sight.
So, is Borat a modern-day version of those old Polish jokes? The movie will have its detractors and defenders, but it's pretty clear the satiric attack isn't on bigotry so much as its origins -- superstitions, traditions, ancestral animosities and beliefs in cultural and gender superiority, all firmly rooted in dire ignorance.
The weapon wielded by Cohen and Charles is crudeness. People today, especially those in public life, can disguise prejudice in coded language and soft tones. Bigotry is ever so polite now. So the filmmakers mean to drag the beast out into the sunlight of brilliant satire and let everyone see the rotting, stinking, foul thing for what it is. When you laugh at something that is bad, it loses much of its power.
BORAT: CULTURAL LEANINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN
20th Century Fox
One America/Everyman Pictures
Credits:
Director: Larry Charles
Screenwriters: Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham, Don Mazer
Producers: Sacha Baron Cohen, Jay Roach
Executive producers: Dan Mazer, Monica Levinson
Director of photography: Anthony Hardwick, Luke Geissbuhler
Production designer: David Maturana
Costumes: Jason Alper
Music: Erran Baron Cohen
Editors: Peter Teschner, James Thomas
Cast:
Borat Sagdiyev: Sacha Baron Cohen
Herself: Pamela Anderson
Azamat Bagatov: Ken Davitian
MPAA rating R
Running time -- 83 minutes...
- 9/12/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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