Sacha Baron Cohen

Well, my husband made me watch Borat now that it is out on DVD. To be honest, I had no interest whatsoever in watching it, as I had seen Da Ali G Show once or twice and was less than impressed with how he treated his guests. However, the buzz around the movie definitely had me curious. While there was a lot of negative buzz, there seemed to be just as much positive buzz from what seems to be a cult following. I work as a Search Guide for ChaCha Search Engine, and daily for two or three months when Borat had hit theaters I would get a search request from someone claiming to be Borat, wanting to know what certain phrases meant.

I had heard that there were those that really loved this movie, and those that really, really despised it because it crossed certain lines with making fun of government issues and being seriously unpolitcly correct. Those that loved it loved it FOR those reasons. For me, I'm unsure of how I felt about the movie. While I don't think it was right that the reason that most of the movie is unscripted is because the people thought they were in a rinky dink documentary and would not be on the big screen where millions of people would see it, I also found a lot of the movie pretty funny.

There were certain scenes where I had a bit of anxiety, because I was thinking "Ok, now that was a bit much, these people are going to crucify him." The scene during the Rodeo in particular. First of all, the guy who told him to shave his mustache so he would look more Italian than Muslim, then told him to act more manly so people would not think he was a fruit, THEN goes on to say that we are trying to lock up gay people as well, came off as a real jerk. I know there are a lot of ignorant people in this world that feel the same way as he does, but unfortunately for him, his unscripted words landed on the big screen.

Then when Borat addressed the Rodeo crowd, stating his support for America, no one noticed he referred to the War On Terror as the War OF Terror, and they kept cheering even when he said to let Bush drink the blood of Iraq's children. I was relieved to see them close up on a woman who was giving her husband a look like "ok..this guy is loopy", because I was supporting Bush, and supporting the way is just fine, as we all have a right to our beliefs and opinions but I was severely hoping that as much hatred as there is in America towards Iraq that they do not want to see innocent CHILDREN die. I was also hoping that maybe they just edited it together to LOOK like these people were rooting him on in his speech, when really it was a clip from some other speech someone else had made maybe.

I can clearly see why he was sued so often. People made themselves out to be real jerks and he put it on the big screen. I read somewhere that the frat guys from the RV sued him.I'm not sure if it was for a reason that was not disclosed? Perhaps because of the degrading things they said about having sex with women and not calling them ever again, they were unable to ever get a date again? Did they expect money because they were in a movie instead of the documentary, and they were not told? I can't say for sure.

I will say that while I kind of enjoyed the movie, I feel bad for a few of the people that were unaware they were going to end up being seen by millions instead of a few that would see it if it was a real documentary. The two couples I feel the worst for are the nice Jewish couple that fed him and gave him a room to sleep in, no questions asked, and the couple that owned the antique shop that he broke hundreds of dollars worth of stuff, just for a laugh. So is Sacha Baron Cohen a jerk, or a comic genius? The jury is still out on that one. They DO tend to say that the British have quit a different sense of humor than Americans.