Moview - Borat (repost)

Movies: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit of Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

I went to see "Borat" this weekend and laughed so hard in some places that my face hurt. This is a very funny movie but it's funny because it's so blatantly offensive in many ways. This is a movie that I could only watch once. If you are planning to see it, don’t ask anyone who's already seen it what happens. The comedy is in the (sometimes predictable) things that Borat does in various situations. Apparently, many of the scenes were improvised with non-actors. It certainly has that feel in places. As you sit and watch, you get the feeling that the events are real - this makes you feel very uneasy in places because you know he's going to do something very offensive.

It was interesting to listen to the audience reaction. There are places in the movie when most of the audience laughed together. There were places where I could hear that only the men were laughing. There were places where I heard only women make comments (notably during the interview with some feminists). And, there were places when the entire movie theater was totally silent. These were the most interesting points. Even if you're not the PC type (and I'm not as most of my friends and colleagues are well aware) a few parts of the movie made me feel very awkward - and judging by the silence, the rest of the audience too.

You should know that Sacha Baron Cohen who plays Borat is Jewish. He also happens to be English (as I am).

I am not sure I'd recommend this movie to everyone. You have to be able to accept that this is a mockumentary not a real documentary (of course) but also that laughter is an expression of embarrassment - not an agreement with someone's political or religious views. It's OK to laugh - and I think it's good for you too. I came out of the movie still giggling about some of the most awful scenes because they are just so embarrassing to watch.

When I got home, I turned on the TV and ending up watching part of a real documentary (on the History channel I think) about our combat hospitals in Iraq and how our young injured troops are treated, cared for and shipped out of Iraq via Germany back to the USA. Our death toll in Iraq is somewhere around 3,000 now but the number of injured is somewhere near 20,000 I believe, and some of these injuries are very serious including loss of limbs and (from a mental point of view) loss of comrades. So as it stands today, about 3,000 of our young men and women won’t be coming back to their families and 20,000 will come back with physical or mental burdens that they will have to bear for the rest of their lives. This is the real world. Borat is just a funny movie. I hope you see it that way too.