Borat; OR: How Part of Me is Still Back on the Theatre Floor Heaving with Laughter

So friends Luke and Kris invited me to see Borat with them. I've read good reviews but also felt a bit hesitant.... but I too often am busy when Kris calls to invite me to something, so I went. I'm still in utter shock. I tried telling my friend Victor about the movie at the gym afterward, and before I was two sentences into my explanation I was beet red, laughing so hard I was crying (thank God the gym was mostly empty... doubtful that was a pretty sight!) And couldn't STOP laughing, or talking about it in this sort of abortive way: "Oh! There's this scene with a chicken... but I won't ruin it for you." Tears streaming, torso heaving...

I like a movie that evokes a response. The most powerful ones tend to be disturbing... like wanting to take a shower after my first time through Requiem for a Dream, or spending the last ten minutes of Dancer in the Dark sobbing. And I rarely like comedies, because too often I find them insulting of my intelligence, or trite, or reliant on sight gags we've all seen before. Well, I have never laughed so hard in my life at a movie. And when I wasn't laughing, my eyebrows were raised so high up on my forehead in disbelief that it started to hurt. All I could keep thinking (when I was capable of thought): "How did he get away with THAT????"

You can read about the movie elsewhere... I did, and I still wasn't prepared. And yes, I freely admit, a couple of the scenes involve some lame slapstick. But even then, what you'll be laughing at isn't the physical humor but the social context in which it occurs.

And, there is a scene in this movie that my ex-boyfriend, who makes some of the raunchiest and most extreme fetish gay porn in the business, wouldn't touch. How this made it onto a major studio's release schedule is inexplicable.

Finally: the biggest reason I strongly advocate anyone who reads this to go see this film is because it will also SCARE you. During the course of his travels, Barat gets informed by honest Americans who have no clue he's not really from Kazakhstan, that "we should still have slaves in this country." The bulk of a rodeo audience cheers when he expresses the hope that George Bush will drink the blood of every Iraqi man, woman, and child. (In all fairness, some of the folks in the audience are visibly distressed by this.) And in one of the most... words fail me. He's at a social function somewhere in the Deep South that has been arranged by an etiquette coach so he can interact with polite society. The house is on Secession Drive. And before the dessert can be served, the black prostitute that he'd phoned earlier shows up unannounced. The not-so-polite side of the society breaks through the cracks of all the genteel faces sitting around the table. I don't even care if it was staged (I'm suspicious about the scene in the bathroom when one of the matrons of the house is teaching him about toilet paper)... it's some of the most incisive social commentary you'll see this year. And it will make you LAUGH.

"You mean the man who tried to insert the rubber fist into my anus was a homosexual?" Oh, God help me... I've fallen and I can't get back up...