'Jackass' meets 'Easy Rider'

Rating: 5/10 (4 November 2006)

This movie works on two levels. It is a Jackass-meets-Easy-Rider for adolescent minds who love crudeness. It may also appeal to more open-minded people who try to find social satire within it and test contemporary limits of decency. Sasha Baron Cohen and his writers don't explore the satire any further than having Borat cluelessly utter and do the most offensive things and showing how Americans react.
If repulsive is funny, this movie should be hilarious.
Some people on his southern route from New York to L.A. exceed his unassuming crassness, ultra-nationalism, racism, anti-Jewish prejudice, and sexism. Because these Americans are clued in, they are just plain mean. Others show their better natures and either try to assist this bumpkin or draw the line on decency. As bad as the movie makes Kazakhstan look, it sometimes makes the United States look worse. When Borat is at a Pentacostal prayer meeting, watching prominent American citizens in suits, including a judge and members of Congress, speak in tongues and swoon in religious ecstasy, we wonder who is stranger.
Yes, you will probably laugh, but there are different reasons for laughter. Sometimes it covers a sense of discomfort from breaking social taboos. Borat just can't get the hang of what to do with a toilet and how it works. Despite intense study with an etiquette coach, he presents a little white plastic bag to the dinner party hostess at the table in front of guests. There's not just nudity, but hairy and obese nudity and fellatio. There is a lot of that kind of laughter in this movie. It makes Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor look mild.
That said, the hand-held camera work and editing are very effective for the candid scenes with apparently unsuspecting "ordinary people." The 90 minutes passed quickly as I followed with interest to see how many taboos of political correctness Borat would break. I lost count. It began with incest, rape, bestiality, anti-Semitism, male chauvinism and sexism, double fellatio, planning to kill and killing pets, and much more. How this movie got nothing more restrictive than a PG 17 is unbelievable.