MovieChat Forums > An American Pickle (2020) Discussion > Borat ripoff, but has sweet moments

Borat ripoff, but has sweet moments

posted 4 years ago by loa14 (73)
2 replies | jump to latest

I watched this on the back of an airplane seat, and that's probably the best place for it. Amazingly, in the UK this actually got a theatrical release, which is just bizarre because this is a TV movie through and through.

Seth Rogen tweeted out that he had seen "Borat 2" 6 or 7 times before it was released, and it shows. His character's speech is an almost direct rip off of Sacha Baron Cohen's character, and he even copies the clumsy "English as a second language" vocabularly choice with the phrase "I will do violence on you".

It tries to make some commentary on current events (Twitter outrage mobs, free speech debates etc.) but doesn't really have anything interesting to say about these. The best moment is near the end, where the fish-out-of-water character succinctly describes why his present-day relative is the way he is. It's honestly pretty touching.

6/10

[–] janoss (214) 3 years ago

He's copying Borat because Sasha Baron Cohen is doing a Russian Jewish accent with heavy Polish. It's familiar to people that have seen Borat.

Is it a real accent? No. Does it sound vaguely Yiddish and eastern European yes.

If you want it real, he should code switch constantly between Russian, Polish, Yiddish, German, and English.

My grandparents spoke a mix of Serbo-Croatian, German, and English. With a bit of Hungarian on top. Their English would sound just as unbelievable even though it was good English. Word order was nonsense. "I will do violence to you." would have been right in their wheel house when they couldn't think of the right words.

[–] saltfat (44) 3 years ago

I didn't hate this...there was a lot I liked. I liked the music and thought the beginning had such a nice fantastical element to it. I loved how it looked - the dreariness and coldness, it was oddly cozy. The characters were terrible, though, and after a while my suspension of belief turned into annoyance with the ridiculous plot. It also didn't seem to have any highs or lows, like things just kept happening. The cancel culture stuff was unneeded and shallow. I did like the ending.

6/10 for me too. Not a fan of Borat or Seth Rogan, but this was alright.