I think his best stuff is when he catches people on video agreeing with his outrageous opinions or he gets them to go on some rant that makes them look foolish. I think at least in the original a lot of his 'making fun of XYZ' worked because it hit the nail on the head in terms of making fun of the people holding those views. So for me stuff from the first one when he says "you can barely see the horns" in regards to a jewish person makes me laugh not because I think jews have horns but because there's actually people who think that, and that's funny to me. But in this movie those same jokes about jews felt a bit dated because it's like 15 years since the first movie and we're still making those same jokes.
The worst parts for me though were the stuff concerning the plot which felt very scripted and acted compared to some of the other stuff. Even though I think the daughter was good and one of the highlights, some of the worst parts were still what they chose to do with her.
For me it's a fine line and the key importance is letting those people make fun of themselves rather than laugh at them. He did another show that wasn't Borat a while ago where he met some gun crazy people from NRA (I believe) and he exaggerated his point of "We need to arm kids at an even younger age, at the age of 4 or 5" and you get these people agreeing to that clearly extreme view and that makes for some laughs. However, there's some scenes in Borat 2 where he goes to talk about abortion and one scene when he goes to talk to some jews and he's being very obnoxious to people who honestly seem pretty genuine. Whether it's an acted scene or not scripted, for me there is a difference of giving people the spotlight and have them embarrass themselves VS point and laugh at people.
See, I think "making fun of people because they hold those views" is a slippery slope that I'd rather not go down. The line as to what's worthy of being made fun of is a pretty tenuous one for me.
But that's my point; "extreme"? To who? One thing I've read a fair amount about is how European kids are brought up around alcohol, and they understand it better than American kids. Too many of us here were sheltered, and got to high school or college and the flood gates burst. No time to learn moderation and how to control it, only how to go to extremes and abuse it.
I grew up around guns; they were around since as young as I remember. I never fired one myself until almost a teen, but they were in the house. My father showed me - like he showed me how to change a tire, how to get a two-stroke gas engine to run, and how to hammer a nail properly - how to check a weapon to see if it was loaded or not, and how to work the safety. As such, to this day, guns are not a toy, and not to be trifled with. It never was even on my radar to bring one to school, or to "break it out" with my friends. "Arm them" as in "give them a gun to carry around"? No, but "arm them" in terms of taking the mystery and confusion out of it? Teaching them what it means to hold and care for a weapon? Why is that necessarily extreme?
Topic: Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Read 4291 times)
