The Hawk

Issue date: 11/10/06 Section: Entertainment

Cohen's comedy thrives in awkward situations.

British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen brings one his characters from "Da Ali G Show" to the big screen in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. The title character, Borat Sagdiyev (as portrayed by Cohen) is a Kazakh TV journalist sent to America by his country's government in hopes of finding information about American culture and catching it all on film for his superiors to see. Beginning with opening credits in Cyrillic letters, Cohen greets us in character when he tells us that he is just like all of us because, according to him, "I like sex. Is nice."

Cohen starts off with a rapid-fire assault of hilarity - a theme that sets the tone for whole picture. Joke after joke is hurled at us as this moronic third world journalist takes us on a tour of his village, where none of Borat's neighbors or family members is introduced without something horrible yet hysterical being said about each of them. As Cohen shows us around, he also tells us a bit about his character's homeland well, which he mentions is next to Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and "assholes, Uzbekistan," and he introduces us to the man who would be the producer for his documentary, Azamat (Ken Davitian), even though he refuses to be put on film. Finally, when we see the title after the colleagues leave the village for the airport in a horse-drawn automobile we all get a chance to breathe for a moment after having so much politically incorrect absurdity packed into less than five minutes of the film's time.

This is Borat's clearest strength: it doesn't stop delivering. Something funny happens, and the film immediately moves on, probably to crack another joke. Rather than let a hackneyed plot get in the way of hilarity, like so many generic comedies tend to do, Borat just fires away. Cohen and his screenwriting team had the right idea in mind here: just keep making funny things happen within the context of a Kazakh journalist trying to make a documentary about American society with his obese producer and the chicken that he packs in his suitcase. Borat is thus a relatively simple comedy for all of the envelopes that it pushes, but maybe this straightforward style of humor is just what the doctor ordered here. Borat's constant failure to relate to the Americans that he meets just doesn't stop being funny since we see it happen in so many different ways like when he hopelessly tries to greet some New Yorkers on the street, attempts to learn how to tell jokes from a humor coach, or when he tries to get a hotel room with his pants pulled beneath his underpants.

Continued...

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