Mean-spirited, ugly -- and NOT amusing. VERY disturbed and disturbing film!

Rating: 1/10 (5 June 2009)

Good grief! I previously had been unfamiliar with Sacha Baron Cohen's work (except that I thought he did a great part in "Sweeney Todd" as the barber Pirelli and so I admired his work as an actor). I didn't see Borat when it was first out in theaters. We rented the DVD recently, having heard that this was a "funny" movie. We had no idea what kind of an awful film this was! WARNING! DO NOT rent or buy or go see this film unless you love "Bevis and Butthead" or other exploitive and offensive types of "comedy," including (literally!) in-your-face offensive nudity.
This movie is horribly and unconscionably mean. Even if (as some reviewer comments have suggested) the sequences with "innocent bystanders" were rehearsed or staged, they are still very disturbing, at least in part because I can see teenagers or immature people trying to imitate this kind of "humor," causing no end of harm.
At least the guy in Jackass did all the stupid things he did to himself. One of the most disturbing aspects of Borat is that he's being rude, offensive, and cruel to other people, supposedly in service of "comedy." This is just NOT funny! I can't understand why some people like this film. I find that the most disturbing of all. Lest you think that I just don't "get it," I LOVE humor and comedy. This is just not funny.
Let me give you an example -- you're at the circus and someone -- a clown -- slips on a banana peel and falls down. Big laugh, OK? But would you keep laughing if the clown then tries to sit up and you see that he has broken his leg and there's blood pouring out of his head? Would you laugh if he started screaming in pain? To interpret Borat as funny, you basically have to be able to laugh at the bleeding clown. Oh, I "get it" -- the "joke" was on him. He thought he was being funny and instead he got badly hurt. Could you really laugh at that? To find this movie funny requires you to interpret people's discomfort or their being insulted as amusing.
At least I know now -- I will never ever go see any film by Sacha Baron Cohen EVER AGAIN. I hope, by these remarks, to give other potential viewers a "heads up" about what kind of "humor" this is.
Don't be fooled. This is not funny. It's very ugly, very offensive stuff.