Entertaining

Rating: 7/10 (12 November 2006)

Sacha Baron Cohen plays Borat Sagdiyev, a leading TV journalist from Kazakhstan (formerly part of the Soviet Union). We start off in Borat's home village which is full of white-trash dressed in clothes they believe are "cool" in the West and where anti-Semitism is regarded as a participation sport.
Borat travels to the U.S. to make a documentary and takes a road-trip from New York to California in an ice-cream van he buys for $700. Borat uses the pretext of the documentary to meet real people and we observe the reaction as he attempts to shock them. Borat's victims are keen to appear on Kazakhstani television and most Americans he meets have no problem in believing that the citizens of his country are stupid peasants.
Borat breaks many of the taboos of polite Western society by making outrageous statements or behaving disgustingly. It's like a revolting re-interpretation of Candid Camera. Cohen's technique is to extract idiotic remarks and the audience is asked to laugh at the brainless dupes. His antics include: defecating in a flower bed in the middle of New York and telling a group feminists that women have smaller brains. One of the strangest scenes involves an extended bout of vigorous nude wrestling with his producer, a fat, ugly hairy man. Cohen literally has his head up the guy's ass.
Most of the U.S. movie review I have read see the movie as a hilarious satire about America. The aim of satire is usually to ridicule the follies of humanity or poke fun at the rich and powerful. As a Brit, my view is that Cohen is simply "taking the p*ss" out of America's great unwashed. In every country in the world you will find people prepared to say ridiculous things for their 15 minutes of fame.
Most teenage boys will enjoy its sadism and find the movie hysterically funny in the same way they enjoy the Jackass movies. I'm not sure what to make of the exaggerated claims for Cohen's brilliance but some of his antics are very funny. I know my wife and mother won't enjoy it.