Word: cohens
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...doubt that Baron Cohen's performance will be cited on Oscar Night. But that wouldn't be a bad idea. Among this year's films I can't think of a ballsier or, within the boundaries it sets for itself, richer characterization...
...Cohen's form of ambush comedy involves donning an assured and preposterously unknowing persona - the hip-hopeless Ali G., for example - then embarrassing real people by asking inane questions and making rude observations. A riff on the Michael Moore style of confrontation, it's a tactic I'm usually not crazy about, since anyone can seem a fool when he's not allowed in on the joke. As Moore once made me uneasily sympathetic to (or feel pity for) General Motors chairman Roger Smith, so Ali G. nudged me to the side of the politicians and aged authors who were...
...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...
...Most of the movies so-called victims, however, ask for it. The film's running gag is that Borat, like all of his supposed countrymen, has a childlike fear of Jews (a joke, of course, since Cohen and most of the film's primary perpetrators are Jewish). In his home town, the annual event is the Running of the Jew; and when he and his team travel across the U.S., they decide to drive (in an ice cream wagon) because his producer "insisted we not fly, in case the Jews repeated their attack of 9/11." While in the South, Borat...
...crowd in Toronto, though, got the joke, even before the movie was screened. Outside the theater, Baron Cohen entered on a cart pulled by six women dressed as scarved Kazakh peasants. When the film broke down at the start of its run, Baron Cohen, director Larry Charles and visiting fireman Michael Moore passed the time by answering questions. The screening was eventually postponed until the following night, leading to some grumbles from the normally ultra-placid TIFF audience - although the headline on Defamer.com, "Toronto Film Festival Projectionist Slain By Angry Borat Fans," was a slight exaggeration...