The culture's boundaries are set by a dominant religious sect, but their declarations of the importance of morality, ethics and mutual respect are contradicted by their private embrace (or tolerance) of cruelty, depravity, anti-intellectualism, and superstition, at least when practiced by members of their own tribe. Borat's country is a kleptocracy that runs on fear, corruption, and theocratic pronouncements that never seem to apply to the people doing the pronouncing. As directed by Jason Woliner ("Nathan for You," "Parks and Recreation"), and scripted by enough screenwriters to field the world's least threatening rugby team, "Borat" stays focused on its core mission: positioning its hero as a depraved, narcissistic fool whose flaws and excesses mirror his clueless targets' so closely that they don't realize they're being made fun of, even when Cohen stops just short of hauling out a sign that reads, "YOU ARE THE JOKE."Īt the heart of the film is the belief that, for all its posturing as The Greatest Nation on Earth, the United States circa 2020 has more in common with a retrograde foreign backwater than its government or people like to admit. But as always, the gags and riffs and characterizations and cultural observations are the point-and the high failure risk, which lends a veneer of excitement even to the dumbest bits. There are a couple of other layers to the plot, revealed in due time.
(Irina Nowak is an incredible find, if indeed she's a "find." The closing credits claim that the movie is "introducing" her, but media outlets speculate that she's really Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova.) Her most treasured possession is a child's bedtime book that depicts the vagina as a toothy maw that will, if touched, swallow the toucher's whole body. Tutar, who was raised in captivity on Borat's farm (like livestock, and Melania Trump, the movie insists), has a lot to learn about life, men, sex, and everything, because women aren't allowed to read, learn, drive, or do anything else in her country. Let's just say that it involves a monkey (actually a chimpanzee), and that when it doesn't work out, Borat tries to mend fences between Kazakhstan and the United States by offering his only daughter, Tutar (Irina Nowak), as a prize to "Vice Premiere" Mike Pence, whose aversion to spending unsupervised time alone with women is chalked up to his voracious sexual appetite. We shouldn't get into that, because the described mission is wild and ludicrous and (Rambo-style) is immediately compromised. Like a noncombatant pervert cousin of John Rambo, Borat is given a mission that will redeem and pardon him if it succeeds: he must journey to the United States in order to.Īctually, hold on. The story begins with Borat's release from prison, where he spent 14 years atoning for his shenanigans in the previous film, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of American to Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." Borat is blamed for the country's political and financial collapse (file footage shows a stockbroker trying to kill himself by jumping from the country's tallest skyscraper, a second-floor office in a muddy village).