"There isn't a person in this room here tonight who isn't wearing a uniform."

Rating: 10/10 (3 December 2006)

Two things have left me somewhat in a state of surprise regarding this comic masterpiece - and make no mistake. It is a comic masterpiece. The first being that people both on 'net and IMDb as well many people I've spoken with, purport not to have laughed whilst watching it. The second thing (and perhaps the morality tale of the film, if it has one) is the "relentless indictment of America" angle.
It's out and out funny and fearless and reminds me quite a bit of the TV comedy we grew up with, here as kids in Australia back in the 70s. Namely, "The Norman Gunston Show". Irreverence, in the hands of a genius, is such a rare thing that when it comes along, I have stomach cramps for days and tears streaming from my eyes recalling scenes. In this respect, people like Sacha Baron Cohen, Christopher Morris with his Brasseye series and radio shows and Garry MacDonald of the aforementioned Gunston show, are three such madmen. Go and see it. It'll keep you talking and laughing well after it falls into the oblivion of the bargain basement DVD racks. It'll endure as well as Monty Python or any of the other high water marks of comedy for a long time to come. Because (did I mention that?) it's funny. Straight up pee-funny.
I've got to say I seldom watch TV and only caught perhaps two episodes of Ali G. And didn't enjoy it. With the exception of the Borat sketches. They were so ruthlessly well executed, I thought they were a different show altogether. And as for the hype surrounding this flick, I was out and out put off in no small way. But go, I did (thank god for friends, eh?).
Back to the second point then - the dreaded, "Look at those kooky, redneck, blissfully ignorant Americans" take. This reminds me of the anecdote about a Frank Zappa performance in New York at the height of the Vietnam War, in which the worked up crowd started yelling out, "Kill the Fascists, kill the pigs" etc, etc, in reference to their own troops and the Nixon regime. Zappa stopped the show and uttered, "Don't fool yourselves, people. There isn't a person in this room here tonight who isn't wearing a uniform!" As I sat and watched this film through tears and an aching jaw from the relentless laughter, I saw a bit of myself - all of the crowd in the cinema, actually - in each of Borat's stooges and straight men. The Southern genteel upper crust, the Frat boys and their 'tit'n'ass' misogyny in their Winnebago milieu, even the paranoid guy Borat chases through the streets of New York. What strangely wonderful people. Well... To be honest , the Rodeo organizer (61 channels of American Gladiator, anybody?) and the used car salesman escaped my empathy completely. (Oh that poor lass on the horse after Borat finishes the Kazakhstani anthem in the rodeo to the loudest silence I think I'll ever hear). And the televangelist politico! Hahahaha! Proved to me that some people even manage to fall of my map of weird.
BUT! This is the beauty and strength of the flick, at large. It's a scalpel slice at this almost intensely (ill?)informed and overly introspective age in which we live. And I thank any or all of the powers above for madmen like Sacha Baron Cohen for making madmen films of this caliber.