Ok, to be honest, I really hated the IDEA of Borat and what clips I saw of him humiliating his easy, easy targets. (Let's embarrass some rednecks! That's new! Oh, nobody EVER makes fun of southern frat boys. Let's do that. And poor people in Eastern Europe, let's make them look REALLY stupid. Hil-LAR-ious!)
I knew from the reviews, even the positive ones, that I didn't have the stomach for that movie. But I liked Sacha Baron Cohen just fine in "Sweeney Todd" and had hopes that for his next movie making fun of poor people might get old and "Bruno" might find himself in a Whole Foods surrounded by people whom his middle class audience wasn't quite so ready to laugh at automatically.
Judging by this,it's not happening and Baron Cohen is right back to humilating stage mothers, evangelical christians and, of course, rednecks in multiple settings.
Sigh.
CC
9 comments:
I got Borat off Netflix recently because a friend was talking about how hilarious it was. I couldn't get through more than the first 10 minutes. I literally couldn't watch it; it was too painful.
Sasha Baron Cohen made poor people in Eastern Europe look REALLY stupid in more ways than one CC. He lied to them about what he was filming and kept them poor by paying them peanuts for their unwitting participation in Borat. Nice guy eh?
I meant to correct my misspelling of Sacha but perhaps it is just as well I didn't. You might get a few more views from Google searches in which people made the same spelling error typo. One of the reasons I don't kill myself to correct typos is because they usually generate a few more Google hits. :-)
On more time - Sasha Baron Cohen
Then again Sasha might be a legitimate alternative spelling of the name Sacha and vice versa. . .
I agree with CC. Just as I can not sit through an episode of JackAss, these two movies for me have no appeal.
He probably did Bruno because of the great turnout from Borat and the studios and him wanted some quick money.
Unfortunately he is soon to be typecast if not already just like Adam Sandler with all of his stupid movies.
Well, yeah, but humiliating people who were just innocently trying to help out with a documentary is what the Borat movie producers did to EVERYONE involved.
Here's an example from America that I linked to a couple of years ago.
CC
We left Borat less than halfway through...
Haven't seen either, haven't felt any desire to--based on this sort of impression from the trailers and people's comments.
There are other films I've been wary of for this reason, too. Jesus Camp was one--until I heard that it was simply observational, not a commentary. Sure, editing has an effect--but the effort was simply to document...
It's one thing to roll one's eyes at people who are being stupid or ridiculous. It's another to lead them--tempt them, set them up--to look stupid. When cops do the equivalent, it's entrapment--illegal and unethical.
When Cohen does it... well, it's not illegal. But it's shameful, embarrassing, and unethical--wrong--still.
Yech.
I dunno. It's shock-based, often gross-out humor that loses its appeal almost immediately. I never thought Borat was a work of genius as some stated.
Mostly it just made me feel uncomfortable. And if I watch the newest one, I'll have the same response.
ogre,
Borat went way beyond even just setting people up to look dumb; for example, the people in the Kazakh village were described as incestuous whores and abortionists. I would have been OK with his leading them into making fools of themselves (which is what Ali G became famous for doing), but he was lying about them for cheap shock laughs.
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