Itsa me

Last weekend I went out to see Borat with some friends but due to theatre hoppers we ended up getting ticket refunds and free passes to The Departed, which was TOTALLY RAD. At that point I was still pretty enamoured with all the positive press Borat had been garnering, all the "comedy of the year exclamation point exclamation point" blurbs really did sound tempting. But over the course of the week, I started to get bored with the shtick as I saw more and more television appearances. And let's face it, it really is just a shtick. And if you like that shtick then 90 minutes of it is going to be pretty awesome. If you don't, then hopefully you've got a big enough popcorn bag to fit your head into.

The movie, as I saw it, comes down to a few recurring gags:
-bad grammar
-poop jokes
-Americans being asses
-rape jokes
-Jew jokes
-male nudity
-Baywatch

And yeah, the nude manfight is as awesome as it sounds, but that's not enough to save the movie. They didn't even show anything good.

Maybe it's my job that ruins the rape jokes for me, but I just couldn't get into the "Oh Borat" mindset that the movie requires; the fact that these got laughs but the crack about the Jews being responsible for 9/11 was too far is just depressing. I mean one is knee slapping fun but the other gets gasps? I just don't know anymore. That shit's just depressing. All in all, the movie was just too long. If I hadn't seen so many commercials, reviews, blog posts and TV appearances then I might have made it through at least the first hour. After that I probably would have reacted the same way and that's okay. I am very clearly the minority here, judging from the nearly sold out theatre and raucous laughter, so I'm not going to hold any sour grapes. It has its audience and it will make a lot of year end lists. I don't need every movie to cater to me, I just wish that I'd spent $10.95 on Stranger Than Fiction instead.