Borat, Cutting Open The Belly Of America

Rating: 9/10 (3 December 2006)

The latest full length adaptation of one of Sasha Baron Cohen characters is part gross-out comedy and part social satire on American society, as the charmingly clueless Kasakhstani reporter travels across the country to learn how to make his home town more like "the greatest country in the world", along the way falling in love with Pamela Anderson and beginning a journey across America to find and marry her.
The joy of Borat is the total cultural incompatibility combined with the easiest aspects of American culture to mock. (You notice how he travels through the southern states, not the north) And sometimes you find yourself unsure which is actually funnier, Baron Cohen's activities or the reactions he draws out of the American public. Some of the people he meets, especially at a rodeo in Texas, really do defy all belief and/or any faith in humanity.
Of course the big question when watching films like this is exactly how much of it is done live and how much is staged, and how much the director had to manipulate to get the reactions they wanted. And of course when they want to make sure they get away with it. (Apparently the police were called on the actor 91 times during production) So sometimes you feel that people had to have been briefed on how to act to move the plot along/prevented being arrested, and sometimes the people say such horrible things they just have to be truly and deeply held beliefs. And the fact that so many people are currently trying to sue the production for the way they've been portrayed in the film, from drunk frat boys to a Romanian village, really proves that people are quite happy to say how they really feel to someone they think they have to be superior to.
Despite all the things that he says and does you can't but help but like the character, because Sacha Baron Cohen manages to imbue the character with such innocence and charm that not once do you ever suspect any of the things he does or says are meant in malice, only total cultural misunderstanding. Especially as you just know there aren't people in the world who are really like this, and if you do well then the joke appears to be on you.
The only point I felt slightly uncomfortable with is the fact that Baron Cohen uses a real country to use as a stereotype, when that might offend real people. But the whole point is that Borat is a collection of stereotypes that people will believe. A mixture of all the different beliefs that people have about poor eastern European countries. (Conversations you see in the film between Borat and his producer actually consist of a mixture of Russian, Yiddish and Armenian with the two actors speaking totally different languages to each other.) Deep down the underlying joke with Borat is that people are so uninformed that they actually believe that Borat's really exist somewhere in the world.
But the main point that underlies all of this is the however offensive Borat is, or however much you cannot believe what you see on screen, you are laughing far too hard to care. There were times it hurt I was laughing so much. You can go into the film consciously acknowledging all the points that could make the film could be politically incorrect or possibly cause offence, but once you're watching it's impossible to take it seriously, and that's the whole point.
I wouldn't say that this movie is to everybody's taste. Avoid if you take offence easily, but if you do remember that that you are missing one of the comic highlights of the year.