Unrelentingly outrageous and daring but unbelievably funny as a result

Rating: 10/10 (5 December 2006)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Borat (Sascha Baron Cohen) opens his film in a village in his impoverished homeland of Kazahkstan, from which he plans to travel to America and film a documentary of him and his friend Azamet (Ken Davitian) exploring the American way of life and trying to blend in. Unfortunately it proves to be a none stop assault of very embarrassing cultural misunderstandings and differences which Borat cluelessly stumbles from one to another of. Things get even more anarchic when Borat develops a crazy dream of marrying Pamela Anderson after seeing her on Baywatch and gets Azamet to start travelling, in their ice cream van, to California instead of New York.
Four years after the Ali G movie proved to be a (fairly) big success at the pictures, Sascha Baron Cohen now delivers a movie adaptation of his second comic creation Borat, who premiered on an episode of Da Ali G Show (but never proved to be quite as successful or influential!) Having said that though, the cards of fortune have been reversed for Borat here, because his movie proves to be just a little bit funnier than Ali G Indahouse, which means it's quite possibly one of the funniest films I've ever seen.
The film simply refuses to draw a line at what too outrageous is, with some (hilariously funny) but cringe inducing jokes involving sex and genatalia, bodily functions, unintentional offensiveness and outright arrestable behaviour. It's not hard to believe that the Kazahkstani locals (amongst others) at the beginning of the film could have been exploited by the film-makers into making complete fools of themselves for peanuts and if this is true you can't help but feel sorry for them but the simple fact is no matter what lines the film crosses, no matter what boundaries it's willing to break, it just never stops being anything less than laugh out loud hilarious.
Probably the first high light of his career, Larry Charles has here delivered a film that he will come to always be remembered by. So guide Borat into your funny bone and let him take you for a drive. *****