Review: Borat (a movie I've never watched up until now, three years after its release)

In 2006, the movie Borat came out. I initially wanted to go see the movie, but after the first week of people everywhere saying "nice" in a foreign accent with a thumbs up I suddenly felt like I should never see the movie lest I catch whatever strange brain damage this movie caused.

Now with the recent release of Bruno by Sacha Baron Cohen, I thought maybe now would be a good time to go back and watch Borat for the first time as I wasn't being bombarded with idiots talking about "sexy time" over and over.

So, overall, this is a very funny movie with Sacha doing what he does best and fucks with people as an outrageous stereotype of a foreigner. I have to wonder, though, how many people in America who went to see this movie and then muttered "sexy time" really got the subtext of this movie. I know there was a lot of anger from the minister of Kazakhstan when this movie came out for how badly it portrayed Kazakhs, what with Borat being a man who has sex with relatives, defecates in public and thinks Jews are monsters that will poison him. However, Borat isn't real. The people he interacts with in the United States are real and make us look like xenophobic, racist, backwards people.

New Yorkers will threaten to beat up a guy trying to greet them by kissing, frat boys will declare that minorities have more rights than white people, a man who runs a gun store doesn't even bat an eye for a request for a gun to "shoot a Jew" and people in a Rodeo will cheer for support of the war on terror all the way up to suggestions of turning Iraq into a wasteland with George W. Bush drinking the blood of the enemies, but get irate when the national anthem is sung incorrectly.

It's frightening and hilarious because it simply focuses on real life which is often funnier than anything you can make up. I know that part of it flew over the heads of a lot of Americans who saw this, but for the rest of us it smacks us right on the head and makes us want to continue to weep into our liquor.

So yes, now that people are no longer annoyingly quote this movie, it's a good time to see it if you haven't. It's really funny and shows Americans for the retards we can be.

Cheap to buy almost anywhere on DVD for under $10 at the moment, it's a good recession entertainment buy, and I will recommend Amazon.com because I am their shameless whore.

Expect me to review Bruno in 2012.