Baron Cohen hits the road to explore America as the crude Kazakh reporter in this feature mockumentary.

Rating: 9/10 (5 July 2010)

In this spoof, Borat Sagdiyev (Sacha Baron Cohen), a Kazakh TV presenter, is ordered by his government to travel to the US and report on its way of life. He interviews Americans about feminism, sex, etiquette, humour, politics and religion. He also falls for Baywatch star Pamela Anderson, who he tries to kidnap.
Borat has a clever premise, with a straight-faced, apparently naive foreigner coaxing outrageous, embarrassing comments from innocent, well-meaning Americans not in on the gag. Yet the film trades on gross-out humour, and picks on easy targets: evangelical Christians, rodeo rednecks, unsmiling feminists. Essentially, this is Candid Camera - with the unwelcome addition of anti-Semetic jokes. One wonders at Baron Cohen's motives: is this a smug in-joke, a tilt at political correctness, or a cynical attempt to shock? Exasperatingly, it's a little bit of all three. The film was criticized by the Kazakhstan government, Jewish and gypsy groups.