Sleazy Rider

Rating: 10/10 (4 November 2007)

Those reviews that call this sophomoric toilet humor are blind to its biting satire.
This is a wicked and devastatingly ingenious comical rewind of the 1969 "Easy Rider." Borat's wacky adventure puts him in touch with the real Americana.
In doing so it paints a grotesque "Picture of Dorian Gray" portrait of the frivolous, discomfortingly and ugly side of America.
Unlike in "Easy Rider," Borat doesn't reserve this for the easiest targets: narrow minded and provincial southerners. He starts with New Yorker feminists and winds up on Los Angeles' Sunset Strip. In between we get an unvarnished look at frat boys, evangelicals, and bigots.
The American anthem vignette at the rodeo is both devastating funny and frightening. Likewise, the dinner club conversation.
OK, so it's done at some people's expense. That's a small price for holding up a mirror to ourselves and seeing how out our narcissistic culture is perceived by the rest of the world.