Still better than "Brüno", but not as funny to me now as it was in the theatre

Rating: 6/10 (14 September 2011)

It's been nearly five years since this movie, starring Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat (one of his three alter egos from "Da Ali G Show"), came into theatres, turned out to be a great success, and sparked a lot of controversy! I went to see it on the silver screen in November 2006, and that was definitely the biggest movie-going crowd I've ever been in! I found this extremely raunchy and politically incorrect comedy to be overall very good at the time, both shocking and funny. I watched it again on the small screen a few months later, when it was new to the home video format, and still thought it was overall funny, even though I knew more about it and how it was made by this point. However, another viewing of "Borat" last year (my first in three years), followed by one this year, have proved to be a bit bland in comparison.
Borat Sagdiyev is an extremely sexist, anti-Semitic, and anti-homosexual man from Kazakhstan, and is a very popular television personality in that country. The Kazakh Ministry of Information sends him to the United States of America with producer Azamat Bagatov to make a documentary film about the country which will benefit Kazakhstan. The two of them fly to New York, and initially, the intention is to shoot the entire documentary in this city. However, as Borat flips through the channels on his hotel room TV, he comes across an episode of "Baywatch", sees Pamela Anderson in the role of C.J. Parker, and immediately falls in love! After finding out that Pamela lives in California, and that his wrathful wife back in Kazakhstan has just died, he decides to convince Azamat to take the filming project to California, but doesn't tell him the real reason why he wants to go there, which is to marry his new love interest! As the two of them travel across the country, they face numerous complications!
The vast majority of people who appear in this film are not actors, but people who were pranked into believing that Borat really was a man from Kazakhstan. Knowing this was probably a reason why I didn't find some parts as funny with subsequent viewings, such as the part with the title character at the dinner gathering, where he bluntly considers one woman's looks inferior to those of the other two women at the table, and then shows that he doesn't know how to use the toilet! However, this definitely isn't the only reason. Some parts still gave me a thorough laugh, such as Borat taking driving lessons and then going to purchase a car, asking about the "p$#@% magnet," but most parts didn't make me laugh as hard as those. One part I remember making me laugh hard in the theatre was the naked fight, but I definitely found that far less funny the last two times. If I had thought the drunken frat boys were actors the last two times I saw the film (can't say I have much sympathy for them if they really meant what they said, even if they were drunk), I would have thought they were trying to be funny but failing. Even if I didn't usually laugh that hard too many times during my last two viewings, I still at least found a lot of mildly amusing parts (Sacha Baron Cohen's talent obviously helps a lot in the film), but I also found some mediocrity or lameness.
After the release of "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan", Sacha Baron Cohen followed it up in 2009 with "Brüno", featuring the only character from "Da Ali G Show" he hadn't made a movie with yet. I didn't see that one in the theatre, but saw it on DVD last year, and with just one viewing, I thought it was below average. My last two viewings of "Borat" were after that, and I still found this film to be better than Cohen's follow-up, but certainly not as funny as I found it several years earlier. I was not there to witness any of the filming process of this hit 2006 comedy, so I obviously don't know exactly how it was done, but knowing how few people were acting did make some parts a little awkward to me with recent viewings, though not everything, since it didn't seem ALL of them got it so bad, and I doubt absolutely EVERYONE who was pranked deserves sympathy, but it still can be at least somewhat cruel. Also, even if the entire film had been staged, I think I still would have found it to be hit and miss during my last couple viewings. So, I still don't hate this "Borat" movie like some people do, but I do think it is overrated.