Larry Charles to direct Borat movie

English Public Schools: Lord Snooty + Billy Bunter + the compulsory wearing of blazers. American Public Schools: Bash Street Kids + compulsory wearing of military-standard body armour.

I disagree with you all, I found it to be quite masterful.

He may be public school twat, but ... wasn't his dad Welsh and his mom Israeli?

And he's English. His father grew up in Wales but is English too.

Whiney's "lost transmission" otm. Honestly the thing that caught me most off guard and really made it feel like something from another time is that he really cant seem to shake the gay-panic elements out of that character. All the peepee-poopoo-vagine jokes obviously feel like a relic from teen comedies of another era, but theres also a baseline homophobia to a lot of grossout stuff and its weird to me that Cohen still goes there.

Like obviously rudy's hand in the pants is the big news story, but as its depicted in the movie the part of the scene thats clearly intended to be the actual punchline, the big climactic "i cant believe he went there" belly laugh for the finale, wasnt rudy trying to fuck a reporter, but borat bursting in dressed in a bra and panties talking about having gay sex.

And like I get that a lot of those kinds of jokes are intended to be confronting bigots with extreme versions of their stereotypical fears or whatever. But idk, theres also no getting around the fact that at some level we're also clearly supposed to be laughing at the 'ridiculousness' of this guy, this craaazy coocoo-for-cocoapuffs Borat guy who's just so outrageous, talking about having sex with another guy, like can you even believe it folks??

Right after watching this we watched Dave Chappelle on the new Letterman show and he talked about the famous moment when he decided to quit Chappele's Show when he realized he was he was deluding himself about fighting racism while literally dressed up in minstrel makeup for white people to laugh at, it felt like kind of the same thing. I dont know if Cohen is as in-control of the satire as he thinks he is.

And yet, we've been watching some Arrested Development, which I'd never regularly watched, and I am absolutely shocked at the persistent degree of cringe ironic racism, but my daughter hasn't said anything yet.

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, October 24, 2020 12:03 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

there was a lot of "ironic racism" in the 00's but borat took it to a new fucked up level by exploiting actual villagers in Romania, many of whom felt humiliated byhis portrayal of them:

https://abcnews.go.com/International/Entertainment/story?id=2659018&page=1#:~:text=The%20Romanian%20village%20of%20Glod,Cohen%20and%20his%20production%20company.

his sanctimonious excuse for this type of behavior -- that he is simply "exposing" the racial hatred of the american proletariat -- makes it worse.

And like I get that a lot of those kinds of jokes are intended to be confronting bigots with extreme versions of their stereotypical fears or whatever.

like i said, if anything, this aspect of borat makes it even more unbearable. he is profiting from racist and homophobic humor and yet retains the moral high ground by scapegoating his targets. and in the first borat, like, half of the people he targeted were actually bigoted iirc and the other half were just baffled by his antics and trying to be polite.

if he was just a racist comedian, like jeff dunham or something, he would be safely and rightly ignored. but instead he does the equivalent of the jeff dunham terrorist puppet routine but then goes around and gets interviewed by npr and the new york times and calmly explains that his purpose was to highlight the prejudice of american society -- that he has come to teach us, and to shame us. it's sociopathic basically.

like what if an ilxor did that? like if someone came on here with a sockpuppet of an offensive stereotype that made everyone uncomfortable, and then when the rouse was discovered said that the problem was really with us. how did we not know it was fake right away? it shows your prejudice and ignorance! and it reveals my genius! it's just crazy.

*ruse

half of the people he targeted were actually bigoted iirc and the other half were just baffled by his antics and trying to be polite.

I think Nathan For You made a lot of SBC's shock-doc type stuff obsolete for me by showing how it can be much, much funnier (and more insightful) to show people being nice beyond all reasonable expectations than to bait people into showing their "true selves", which is what SBC imagines he is doing. see also: one of the funnier jokes mentioned upthread, the lady being totally unfazed about being paid $20k in a duffel bag.

like what if an ilxor did that? like if someone came on here with a sockpuppet of an offensive stereotype that made everyone uncomfortable, and then when the rouse was discovered said that the problem was really with us. how did we not know it was fake right away? it shows your prejudice and ignorance! and it reveals my genius! it's just crazy.

I dont know if Cohen is as in-control of the satire as he thinks he is.

This is the/a problem I've always had with him. It's so sloppy and lazy, like if he has a choice between the broad easy joke and the smart subtle joke, he'll almost always go broad and easy, maybe because the smart subtle joke takes too much work or may not get as many quick laffs. I think someone like Iannucci is better at the smart and subtle (maybe sometimes to a fault, as The Death of Stalin wasn't exactly funny), or someone like Chris Morris and "Four Lions." But Cohen just can't help himself. I remember many years ago being with my brother in law in Sydney, and everyone else was out so we decided to rent a movie and got the Ali G movie, since we'd seen bits and pieces of the bit. And it was just so bad and not funny, and I thought, huh, I thought this guy was supposed to be sharp. If memory serves, it starts with a dog waking him up by licking his balls, and I thought, really? That's what you're going for, even as this character?

Anyway, Nathan For You cracking the code is otm.

Mac Donald Trump

"sup"

Ali G was p much always just "what if Dennis Pennis but racialist." The bit of the movie I saw seemed to remove the celebrity-rudeness Pennisisms and lean into being aimed entirely at 12-yo boys who wanted to giggle at the breaking of social norms.

Apparently SBC previously did the Borat schtick as Alexi Krickler from Moldova and Kristo Shqtipari, from Albania, so theory about him going for "funny" K-sounds confirmed, at least.

wild horses could not drag me to see this

damn he looks like freddie mercury in that albania clip

xpost What about two cows enticed by turnips?

SBC is a menace and a bad artist

"wild horses could not drag me to see this" well good because it's a streaming film and not something in a theater

More like a streamin' pile o shite

His widely published autism studies crank cousin needs pushing into the pit as well

this movie sucked... Grand Canyon University doesn't even offer a VCR repair program... I checked...

Like obviously rudy's hand in the pants is the big news story, but as its depicted in the movie the part of the scene thats clearly intended to be the actual punchline, the big climactic "i cant believe he went there" belly laugh for the finale, wasnt rudy trying to fuck a reporter, but borat bursting in dressed in a bra and panties talking about having gay sex

agreed I think this guy is so sharp that it's really disappointing he just goes for grossout humor so often, kinda feels like he's just going "well this is what people know me for right?"

by and large I thought this was pretty funny though. the last 5 minutes were great. I did think it was a good idea to give the daughter so much screen time, she was really good. like most of you I spent a lot of the film trying to figure out who was an actor and who wasn't. thought a lot about this article I read a few years ago about Nathan For You, and all the steps they go through to get the footage they need. it mentioned SBC a lot and how he basically had an entire fake company whose only purpose was to set this up. the impression I got was that a lot of this was legit, but obviously the entire 'story' comes together in post

Nathan is one of the "Thanks"ed ppl in the end credits

pic.twitter.com/8TgCl39vwT

— Poorly Aged Things (@PoorlyAgedStuff) October 24, 2020

I think Nathan For You made a lot of SBC's shock-doc type stuff obsolete for me by showing how it can be much, much funnier (and more insightful) to show people being nice beyond all reasonable expectations than to bait people into showing their "true selves", which is what SBC imagines he is doing.

all the "topical" jokes in this were extremely cringey and awful (eg him taunting Giuliani with the "golden shower" remark, listing all the Trump ppl in prison etc), the best bits were the toilet humor and actually-funny ironic commentary on the alt-right, eg Borat's terror when he finds out via Facebook that the Holocaust "didn't happen". the daughter was impressively committed. overall I mildly regret watching

there's likely a good essay to be written about how and why jackass has aged better than SBC's toybox

Because Jackass is pure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRGXq4t9wY4

that's kind of brilliant, hats off

I thought this was pretty good. I fell asleep near the beginning though and missed a good chunk of the daughter's makeover section; I did wake up in time for the father-daughter dance, which was glorious.

I really loved the QAnon guys telling him his ideas about women made no sense

I really think Maria Bakalova deserves some kind of award for that dance scene.

Couldn't finish this one. It just feels like they are just baiting people throughout, and the fact that there are cameras everywhere seems to make everyone feel like they are in on some joke rather than having authentic reactions to all of SBC and MB's antics.

watched SBC's interview on Colbert, some pretty crazy behind the scenes stories (and video of him having to flee the stage as "Country Steve" once people figure out who he is). though Colbert asks him about the QAnon dudes and what they thought about having a whole filming crew there and he kinda ducks the question, saying something like "oh they knew there was a crew there"...so did he just explain this was some documentary in a foreign country? how did they not know who Borat was?

fertility dance had me rolling on the floor Borat 1 style

xp Eh, its not super hard for me to believe that dumb old white guys in a weird cabin like that might not know who Borat is. If they weren't just straight-up actors, I feel like it must have been a case where they were just being paid something to host him for what they thought was a foreign TV show or something.

Couldn't finish this one. It just feels like they are just baiting people throughout, and the fact that there are cameras everywhere seems to make everyone feel like they are in on some joke rather than having authentic reactions to all of SBC and MB's antics.

― DJI, Monday, October 26, 2020 5:58 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

i like this review, written by someone who was apparently frozen in amber since 2003 and then defrosted in 2020 to watch borat 2

the resistance-core SNL/Colbert style lib humour was too much for me; having Borat day “grab her by the pussy”... who is this for?

I feel like SBC really miscalculated the demographic game here; the humour is way too gleefully offensive for anyone who watches it to the end to give him credit for the cringey “feminist” ending. Should have just gone for the millenial “my wife”-guy irony crowd who grew up on The Ali G Show, instead of like, our parents who are glued to MSNBC. Also, the Giuliani gotcha is extremely underwhelming.

Should have just gone for the millenial “my wife”-guy irony crowd who grew up on The Ali G Show, instead of like, our parents who are glued to MSNBC.

tbf, Chappelle did this and the internet commentariat hates him now

xp amber is a solid at room temperature though, so it wouldn't make sense to try and defrost it. heating it to a liquid might do the trick, but of course it would need to be done in a carefully controlled environment with vital signs monitored as the borat 2 reviewer emerges from suspended animation. so this is a tricky one

tbf, Chappelle did this and the internet commentariat hates him now

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Wednesday, October 28, 2020 3:15 PM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

good point. ive loved all his new stuff but Dave def went too far. it’s a hard needle to thread

Chappelle genuinely has several dumb and retrograde opinions though, he's not trolling ironically

I don't know if I will watch this, but since it feels a bit like the critical tide turned against SBC sometime around or after the first movie, it is good to remember that, at his best, he was/is very very funny.

someone upthread mentioned that Nathan Fielder is the king of this kind of comedy and I agree, mainly because he actually lets his marks reveal themselves as strange and often endearing characters rather than just yell "LÖÖK AHT MY ÀHNOOS" at unsuspecting copy clerks

I still think Ali G was one of the funniest series ever, it's strange that SBC thinks its because his characters are so funny and not because of the exasperated reactions from everyone he dealt with

i disagree but i actual LOLd at LÖÖK AHT MY ÀHNOOS so im probably the wrong person

i love nathan obv but i think SBC is the GOAT, even if he’s fallen off lately, judged on full oeuvre

Chappelle genuinely has several dumb and retrograde opinions though, he's not trolling ironically

― Un-fooled and placid (sic), Wednesday, October 28, 2020 3:34 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

ya this is otm

When was the Ali G movie? 2002? That was such utter garbage that it was a wise move for him to forget about the UK and turn his attention to the US.