The Pop Pirate

Who Knew?

On Firday, my wife Jodi and I went (across town) to see Borat. There we were, as usual, 20 minutes early waiting for the show to start, while watching mindless ads defile the silver screen, and we notice that the house is beginning to fill. Curious, we thought, for a relatively early showing. We also happened to notice that sharing the row with us were several couples over 60. And I don't mean to stereotype to heavily here, but they looked quite stodgy. Having some idea of what was in store for the feature, we placed bets on how long before these couples bailed out.

They didn't. In fact, thoughout the movie, they laughed boisterously and at some of the most raunchy scenes. They were certainly not alone- everyone in the audience, be they old, young, male or female, were cracking up.

Clearly, there's something about this movie that crosses demographic lines. How else to explain the phenomenal numbers of this weekend? The question is: what is it? My guess: this film is so broadly successful because it works on so many levels. Few movies can so seamlessly cater to the dick-and-fart-joke crowd, the Chistopher-Guest-improv-mockumentary crowd and the Jackass-pain-is-funny crowd- all in the same scene.

Perfect example: Jodi was completely expecting to hate the movie. She had seen a couple of episodes of Da Ali G Show; she thought the character of Borat was mildly amusing at best. Her main concern was that a schtick that was worth a chuckle or two over 5 minutes was going to be excrutiating over 84. In fact, it took some convincing to get her to come at all. She left with a bellyache from laughing and a shocked appreciation of the spectacle she had just witnessed. So even though, it's risky, it's edgy, it's crude and it's fearless, there's one quality that so many comedies miss, and ultimately it's the one that makes them successful: it's really, really funny.

posted by Jeff @ 9:33 PM