As I was walking back to my dorm late Saturday night with my friend Kate, a sophomore dressed in a gray suit wearing a fake black mustache approached us. “I like!” he pronounced, pointing at Kate. “How much?”
I was hardly surprised. It’s not that Kate invites such advances—quite the opposite, in fact. I was unfazed because what with the ingenious promotional stunts and advertising for Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, this was my third sighting of Borat, the movie’s gloriously un-PC, anti-Semitic buffoon, that night.
There are very few movies I would unreservedly recommend before seeing them. Even fewer are so well publicized and eagerly anticipated that they aren’t in need of such recommendations. Borat accomplishes the impressive feat of fitting into both of those categories.
Borat, coming to theaters on Friday, is the brainchild of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, better known for his role as Ali G. The film promises to be the most fun hour-and-a-half you’ve spent in a movie theater this whole year.
The premise for the movie is simple. Borat (Cohen), a reporter on assignment for Kazakhstan, traverses the United States in an ice cream van learning lessons from real Americans for the benefit of his home country. On the way, he’ll no doubt offend you in every way possible.
In one deleted scene, Borat asks the owner of a kennel to put her fingers on her head like horns and say “Shalom” while he tries to train a dog to “attack the Jew.” He’s also likely to tell people about the incestuous relationship he has with his sister. Borat can hardly be blamed for that, though; she is, after all, the “number four prostitute in all of Kazakhstan.”
This past summer, Baron Cohen stole the spotlight from Will Farrell in “Talladega Nights” with his portrayal of a gay French racecar driver. He has an uncanny ability to assume a vast array of wildly different, equally ridiculous characters, which is put to excellent use here.
Though the film isn’t out yet, people are already dressing up as Borat and quoting him with an almost unhealthy frequency, thanks to the film’s amazing PR. Borat has made numerous public appearances, from a press conference outside the embassy of Kazakhstan here in D.C. to Late Night with Conan O’Brian, during which he unsuccessfully tried to get Conan to touch his “khram.”
Advertising has been so successful that the government of Kazakhstan took out a four-page advertisement in The New York Times to counter the myths Borat is spreading about Kazakhstan. They even threatened legal action against Baron Cohen. Borat, for his part, immediately posted a video on his website saying, “I fully supports my government’s decision to sue this Jew.”
Cohen already has a solid following here in the U.S, thanks largely to the success of The Ali G Show. The release of Borat will no doubt catapult him, or at least his rude alter-ego, into stardom.
If the promise of 90 minutes spent watching the antics of a prejudiced, ignorant, fake Kazakh isn’t enough of an incentive to go see the movie, there is one final reason. In the words of Borat, “Please, you come see my movie. If it not success, I will be execute.”
