Movie Response: Borat (2006)

Directed by Larry Charles
Writing credits: Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham, Dan Mazer, Todd Phillips
Starring Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat Sagdiyev

Okay, i get the joke--it's just not funny. If i wanna see Americans make themselves look stupid, i'll tune onto Fox. The Canadian media (including The Strombo, Lainey, Katrina Onstad and prolly other peripheral whisperers) has made WAY TOO BIG a deal over this movie-film. It DOES NOT deserve the media hype it has garnered. Absolutely UNFAIR. Absolutely.

There honestly ARE some people out there in this world and in this country who have zilch social skill. You know, that know-it-all from highschool? or that know-nothing-at-all from highschool? Exactly. We're talking about *that* geek. These people exist.

So, imagine. What would you do, if you were faced with one of these social outcasts? Assuming, of course, that turning around and running the other way were NOT an option?

Would I recommend the movie? Absolutely--NOT. If you want an idea of the film, just watch the trailer. This is the premise: how do "ordinary" American citizens react to a foreigner with zip social skill? whoop-di-doo... who cares?

This movie is the Number 1 movie in America, right now. But, look, the Americans HAVE to promote this film because the joke is on them. Americans HAVE to get on board to look as if they are laughing at the joke, rather than BEING the joke. But by promoting this film, laughing THUS loudly, *America* has only become a bigger and worse joke.

It's like the "Emperor's New Cloak." After the innocent boy reveals to all that the Emperor is naked, imagine the Emperor, still naked on stage, laughing the loudest, thanking the tailors, giving the tailors even more money, and pretending that the whole circumstance really were funny.

Nuh-uh: it's not funny. It's pitiable, lamentable. I feel sorry, disgusted, and duped into having seen it.

What's lost is lost and cannot be unlost. And what's lost here is Face. No Facey. No Facey left at all.