More a satire on the US than on Kazakhstan

Rating: 7/10 (3 November 2006)

This film does what it sets out to do  make an audience laugh. They laughed here in Helsinki on the opening night  not uncontrollably, not immoderately, but they did laugh consistently and there was indeed a great deal to laugh at.
If there are targets for satire here, they are first and foremost the Americans that Borat meets, and secondarily western stereotypes of emerging nations such as Kazakhstan. It's perhaps a little hard on the Kazakhs that their homeland was chosen to give birth to Borat, and their government is reportedly up in arms about it. They might do well to reflect on the old adage that all publicity is good publicity, and on the fact that the treatment of them is affectionate in its way.
What did surprise a little is how well many of the targets emerged. Some elderly bigots were neatly and rightly skewered on their own prejudices. Various "experts" on this and that were shown up to be vacuous, as you would expect. I found one scene, set at a family guest house, unnecessarily cruel, and I'm knocking a point off for that. And some groups and individuals came out of it really well  such as the Pentecostalists and the driving instructor  and I'm putting a point back on for that, for taking the smooth with the rough.
A good evening's entertainment, and Sacha Baron Cohen is surely one of the world's greatest comic actors and I hope he will continue to find outlets for his immense talents. But overall there were too few surprises and too many jokes with only one dimension for it to become a classic  though the dinner party and the nude wrestling will linger in my mind for a long time to come.
Seven out of ten.