Word: borat
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...whirlwind days, is that each moviegoer creates his own festival. And the hottest Toronto ticket, the buzz bomb of the Great White North, is another Brit-American mockumentary that is just as politically pointed as Death of a President but with a wildly raucous, satiric tone. It is Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, whose guide is a purported TV host and "sixth most famous man in Kazakhstan" of the former Soviet Union. Borat is the nom de guerrilla-humor of Sacha Baron Cohen, aka Ali G. - as HBO viewers know, and many millions...
...Borat is one of three prominent, eagerly anticipated U.S. comedies gracing the Festival. The others are For Your Consideration, the latest in Christopher Guest's semi-improvisational parodies (following Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind) and Stranger Than Fiction, in which America's top film funnyman Will Ferrell taps a kinder, gentler side - Motion Picture Academy members, attention must be paid...
...With Borat, however, and Borat, my ethical reservations wilt beneath the giddy pleasure this film gave and gives me. It's the laugh that keeps on laughing. Accompanied by his obscenely obese producer Azamat Bagatov (Ken Davitian), Borat has come to the U.S. to make a documentary for his countrymen about the world's most powerful nation. He is a mass of homegrown superstitions (he brings with him "a jar of gypsy tears" to prevent AIDS) and prejudices (against Jews, whom he has apparently never encountered). Checking into a Manhattan hotel, he is accompanied by the manager into the elevator...
...Washington, D.C., leg of his trip, Borat does corral a few unwary dignitaries for Ali G.-type teasing. With forced gentility, former Congressman Bob Barr listens to Borat's generous offer of homemade cheese - his wife "makes it from milk from her tit." And in a discussion of family values with perennial G.O.P. candidate Alan Keyes, Borat asks, with astonished indignation, "Are you telling me that that man who tried to put a rubber fist in my annus [anus] was a homosexual...
...Baron Cohen throws himself recklessly into all manner of potentially dangerous situations. The crowd at the rodeo starts booing Borat when he sings the "Kazakhstan national anthem" to the tune of "The Star Spangled Banner." A group of young louts in an RV get Borat almost as drunk as they spout their beery misogyny. And there's an eerie scene in a revival tent where he accepts Christ as his Savoir and babbles in tongues. As if honoring the intensity of the believers' fervor, Baron Cohen does not act up - he goes with the holy-water flow...