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Borat

Sacha Baron Cohen can probably never go as deep undercover into a character as he did with Borat, a journalist from Kazakhstan who’s doing reports on American culture. Borat, as seen in the film of the same name and Da Ali G Show, was a well-intentioned idiot, someone who seemed to know nothing about America but was able to embarrass all of his famous subjects once the cameras turned on. Since the 2006 film was such a wild success, Cohen has kind of faded away from the public eye. In the summer of 2009, his follow-up film, Bruno, faltered critically and commercially. There are laughs to be had in Bruno, but there’s something to be said for a lack of surprise. Most people who saw Borat genuinely had no idea that Sacha Baron Cohen was playing a character, or even that he had just appeared in Talladega Nights as the villain.

Whatever has happened to Cohen’s career since Borat (I’m a fan of his turn in Sweeney Todd), there’s no mistaking that Borat is a genuinely hilarious film. Like most outlandish and puerile comedies, the story comes, oh, just about last (if I remember correctly, Borat wants to shack up with Pamela Anderson, hence a personal reason for traveling across the country). There are, however, enough memorable setpieces and big laughs, most notably a naked wrestling match in the middle of a hotel filled with confused onlookers. Cohen’s clearly a very talented performer and writer, but Borat was both a wildly famous film and one that damned him from never successfully pulling the wool over people’s eyes again. Cohen’s a performance artist of the highest order, but his most intense performance is his downfall. Who won’t recognize him now, no matter what voice or wig he puts on? Two films was one too many.

Pirates of the Caribbean

No, not the ride. Yes, the movie. What exactly about Pirates of the Caribbean constitutes modern performance art? Nowadays, we think of Johnny Depp as one of the biggest movie stars of the last 10 years. Alongside people like George Clooney and Brad Pitt, Depp sets people off in the best way possible. And yet it’s worth remembering that only a few years ago, executives at Walt Disney Pictures were stricken with fear. They were spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a movie based on a theme park ride, and the leading man was playing a pirate via a mix of Keith Richards and Pepe Le Pew? We all love Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow - okay, not everyone does, though I’m of the mind that the second and third films weren’t great, but Depp remains hilarious - but his performance could have easily fallen flat.

The way I prefer to see it is that Johnny Depp did what a few other actors in the past decade have done, most specifically John Turturro in the Transformers films. Depp signs a contract to play Jack Sparrow, is paid his allotted fee, and then says, “Wait, this is the check? And you can’t take it back? So I get to do whatever the hell I want? And you’ve already paid me to do so? Okay then.” Getting paid to make a fool of yourself is pretty much what acting is (at least from my cynical point of view), and what Johnny Depp does in the Pirates of the Caribbean films is have fun being the biggest fool of all. Performance art doesn’t always work, but Captain Jack Sparrow is arguably the most profitable piece of performance art in the past decade.

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