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phyloxena[...]
But because Cohen is intentionally provocative, willing to mock whoever crosses his path, he ends up baiting the harmless and playing ordinary people for fools just because they are gullible and had the bad luck to run into him, and it's here that the laughter especially sticks in your throat. The car dealer who doesn't object when Borat makes anti-Gypsy remarks might not be a secret racist but simply someone who decided it was a mug's game to get further involved with an obvious lunatic. And the Southern dining society that gets mercilessly humiliated seems to have committed no sin worse than earnestness, credulity and hospitality.
With his corrosive brand of take-no-prisoners humor that scalds on contact, Cohen is the most intentionally provocative comedian since Lenny Bruce and the early days of Richard Pryor -- with a difference. For unlike those predecessors, there is a mean-spiritedness, a lurking every-man-for-himself coldness about his humor. The one kind of laughter you won't find in "Borat" is laughter that acknowledges shared humanity. Instead, there is that pitiless staple of reality TV, watching others humiliating themselves for our viewing pleasure.
Gifted and funny though he is, Cohen and his love of transgression are finally very much of and about our time. For better or worse, we deserve each other, and we might as well laugh.
from:
http://www.zap2it.com/movies/reviews/zap-borat-review,0,2743566.story
And I did laugh all 1 hour 45 minutes of this, embarrased for others and myself as well all the time.
But because Cohen is intentionally provocative, willing to mock whoever crosses his path, he ends up baiting the harmless and playing ordinary people for fools just because they are gullible and had the bad luck to run into him, and it's here that the laughter especially sticks in your throat. The car dealer who doesn't object when Borat makes anti-Gypsy remarks might not be a secret racist but simply someone who decided it was a mug's game to get further involved with an obvious lunatic. And the Southern dining society that gets mercilessly humiliated seems to have committed no sin worse than earnestness, credulity and hospitality.
With his corrosive brand of take-no-prisoners humor that scalds on contact, Cohen is the most intentionally provocative comedian since Lenny Bruce and the early days of Richard Pryor -- with a difference. For unlike those predecessors, there is a mean-spiritedness, a lurking every-man-for-himself coldness about his humor. The one kind of laughter you won't find in "Borat" is laughter that acknowledges shared humanity. Instead, there is that pitiless staple of reality TV, watching others humiliating themselves for our viewing pleasure.
Gifted and funny though he is, Cohen and his love of transgression are finally very much of and about our time. For better or worse, we deserve each other, and we might as well laugh.
from:
http://www.zap2it.com/movies/reviews/zap-borat-review,0,2743566.story
And I did laugh all 1 hour 45 minutes of this, embarrased for others and myself as well all the time.
