Great acting, overrated comedy of its day.

Rating: 6/10 (6 January 2016)

When this film released to theaters, reviewers were literally falling over themselves to give the picture a "two thumbs up", check Rottentomates.com for an impression of the critical response to the movie. You can also find TV interview segments on Youtube where Sasha Cohen, the star of this comedy, admits freely that the film is overrated.
Why? Well, for starters there's a tendency to put too much gloss on everything in the world of Hollywood, as if production technique is as important (or clearly, more important) than having an original idea. Also, much of the sentiment and emotion in US cinema is generalized at best, or grandstanding propaganda at worst.
"Borat" the movie follows a Kazakh TV journalist on a voyage around the United States, discovering American lives via interviews that often derail or become awkward due to his apparent foreignness. His real- life interviews reveal the cultural inconsistencies, classism, racism, sexism, religious bigotry in modern society, an image that's often ironed out so its 'best view' is on display in cinema etc.
That said, "Borat" just isn't very good comedy. His acting chops are great, and there's clearly a number of memorable situations, but I personally only actually laughed two or three times during the film. It seems like the daring, no-holds-barred nature of the comedy and its underlying social critique are what film critics held up as great comedy, regardless of its actual humor value.
With a title like "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" and such an almost-iconic character that Cohen created for this picture, I very much wanted to like the film, but felt it often reveled in awkwardness and bad taste rather than any deeper sociological comedy. Commendably the film does put in a very touching moment on the senselessness of war, also the film makes some point about the inherent 'not-grown-up-ness' of popular culture. Much is made of the films 'mercilessly un-PC' approach, but to be honest I just thought the jokes were kind of gross.