Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)

In his review of Borat, I remembered David Edelstein saying the film made him cringe. I felt the same way. During its 85-minute running time, my emotional response was one of “disconnected embarrassment,” an oxymoron befitting the film’s contradictory approach to its material. The film caricatures the idea of “the foreigner” in the form of a low-brow, but mainstream narrative; it is designed to appeal to passive male adolescent movie-viewers. And the film fails, compared to the more consistent & better structured Talladega Nights featuring equally outrageous but more family-friendly performances by Cohen & Will Ferrell. At least this Nascar-culture caricature has a palatable touch of burlesque. Borat fails in tone, a cohesive structure and in its intentions.

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