Hey folks, Harry here with the first full review of BORAT from TORONTO. The first screening ended in technical difficulties, this screening... went better. Here ya go...
Harry,
I just came back, slightly chilled and rainsoaked, from the rescheduled Midnight Madness screening of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan at the Elgin Theatre. With 1100+ advance ticket holders the only chance to get in was the rush line. Not surprisingly, the line started to form a full eight (8) hours before midnight and the first fifty (50) people were able to get in. The Elgin is a larger venue than the Ryerson Theatre so there were, in fact, a few dozen empty seats. The long wait was well worth it as Borat was finally screened before the masses attending the 31st Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). And, thankfully, the film projector did its thing without a hitch. Larry Charles introduced the film and Michael Moore attended the screening as well. Cohen was nowhere in site.
To put it quite simply, Borat is a prime example of the vulgar, the shocking and the fuckin' hilarious. The one scene that had entire crowd howling in delight was the nude wrestling match between Borat (played by Sacha Baron Cohen) and his television producer Azamat Bagatov (Ken Davitian) that went from hotel suite, hallway, elevator, lobby and business conference. This scene is guaranteed to go down in cinematic history as one of the surreal fight sequences ever. I do wonder how much of it will be included in the theatrical cut, however. Borat works best when you sit in the theatre not knowing what's about to happen; if you seen the trailer you've witnessed about one third of the film already. Suffice to say that Larry Charles and Sacha Cohen have got the biggest set of balls to shoot a film like this. At times, you'll shake your head wondering how they managed to film this and survived almost unscathed. Kudos to the cast, the crew, the bigots, the ignorant, the innocent bystanders and Pam Anderson for the laughs and gasps.
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