Shocked, Awed, Disgusted and Thoughougly Amazed.

Rating: 10/10 (2 November 2006)

Once in a great while, a film comes along that just leaves you staring wide eyed and open mouthed, long after the credits are finished rolling. Borat, I am delighted to say, is one of these such films. It is unapologetically raunchy, but tremendously funny and oddly poignant at the same time. Perhaps Borat's biggest feat is that it also manages to be entirely original. Sacha Baron Cohen has crafted his masterwork, and delivered to unsuspecting audiences on of the funniest and most unique films of our generation.
The character of Borat was introduced on Cohen's earlier TV show, Da Ali G Show. He is a journalist from Kazakhstan, sent to America to make a film about our culture. Borat is extremely sexist and anti-semitic, but also naive and strangely lovable. He takes on any social norm in his path and shatters it into unrecognizable shards. Traveling with friend and producer, Azamat, he arrives in the U.S.A., and wastes no time shifting the focus of the jokes from himself to us. This is where the movie shows its depth. I am really embarrassed that some of the people he crashed in on share the same country as I do. For example, at one point, in front of a crowd at a rodeo, he says that he wishes to see "George Bush drink the blood of every man, woman, and child in Iraq." The crowd reacted with a thunderous round of applause. How's that for a scathing bit of satire? I'm honestly still a bit awestruck by what I have just seen. It very well may be the funniest movie you will see in years. It is obscene beyond belief, but I laughed myself retarded for all 84 glorious minutes that it lasted. Its smarter than it looks and just plain hysterical. Bottom Line: Borat is a must see. A 10/10