Borat crosses boundaries to a different country and a harder comedy.
This is a great year for comedy. One one hand, you’ve got Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, a perfect example of how mindless humor can work so well. On the other hand, you have Little Miss Sunshine, proof that there’s always a place for a film that can carry heavy loads of humor and drama at the same time. They’re two opposite ends of the spectrum that perfectly balance each other out while making the audience’s cheeks hurt from smiling so much.
If you’ve somehow managed to sprout a third hand somewhere on your torso, however, you’d be holding Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan in it. Borat isn’t just a silly good time like Talladega Nights. It doesn’t attempt to make you feel warm and fuzzy inside a la Little Miss Sunshine. No, Borat makes a spectacle out of the offensive; you stand a better chance of feeling more comfortable at a KKK gathering than in a theater showing the film. But if you don’t mind jokes aimed at prostitutes, mentally handicapped people and of course, Jews, then you’ll laugh your ass off