Word: borat
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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There hasn't been a comedy this edgy in a long time. And there certainly hasn't been one that the comedy élite is this excited by. After seeing an early screening, Curb Your Enthusiasm creator Larry David jokingly asked Borat director Larry Charles, a friend, to put his name on the movie. Even though many people have not heard of the film--Fox last week reduced the number of screens the movie would be shown on from more than 2,000 to 800 for this weekend's opening--it's being discussed on college campuses everywhere. Which...
...lowbrow Jackass to the more intellectual Stephen Colbert. It's the honesty of real reactions, mixed with the personal risk, that makes kids giggle in discomfort. Picking Kazakhstan, a real country, is part of that Andy Kaufmanesque confrontation, as is Baron Cohen's insistence on doing interviews as Borat. "There's something funny about it being a genuine place," says fellow British comedian David Baddiel, who went to the same private high school and Cambridge a few years before Baron Cohen. "That's what makes Sacha's comedy modern, because if that had been an older comedian, Borat would have...
...asking people to high-five over them, he gets folks to say things they wouldn't if they knew the film was going to be shown in their own country. "Political correctness has led to a more civil society because people with racist attitudes have taken them underground," says Borat producer Jay Roach, who directed Austin Powers and Meet the Parents. "It's a fascinating social experiment to observe this character walking amongst us, revealing this...
Clueless, desperate-to-fit-in, optimistic foreigners are a classic comedy trope--the Clouseaus, Cousin Balkis, Morks, Two Wild and Crazy Guys--because they spotlight the ridiculousness that we accept. When he's at a rodeo, driving the crowd into a frenzy with anti-Iraqi, pro-war cheers, Borat demonstrates how much aggression is intertwined with patriotism. And his attempts to be American pinpoint exactly how the world sees us: garish, violent, nouveau riche, a land of Donald Trumps and 50 Cents...
...Borat does well, it could change comedy in two ways. First, if high-grossing movies can be made with just a video camera and a few guys in a van, the studios might find real competition from every fool with a digital camera and access to YouTube. Second, it might limn the generational divide in the way music used to. Because any normal person over 35 is going to find Borat horrifying. What exactly is funny about being invited to nice people's homes and handing them your feces...