Excellent Off-Beat Comedy

Rating: 9/10 (10 November 2006)

This is one of those laugh out loud films that are really enjoyable but never get many Oscar nods. After I wrote this, the Academy gave it no awards. It is mainly Sasha Cohen's show although the support players he plays off do an incredible job but they are clearly support. Cohen is better in support in Taladega Nights, but proves he can carry a film here.
Borat is portrayed as a TV reporter in his Eastern Europe home country. This starts in his country with a tour of his home town & that he is headed for America to learn how American Comedy works for his home country. The opening sequence is funny & sets the tone for the theme of travel which is a successful theme for many successful past movies by others.
Borat & his traveling companion come via a circuitous route to NYC. There is a hilarious sequence in a NY Subway & it gets funnier from there. In the hotel, Borat sees a Baywatch re-run & falls in love with Pamela Sue Anderson. This is the hook that sets the tone for all that is to come. His pursuit of meeting her takes many twists & turns & every one of them is laugh out loud hilarious.
The spoiler is that he does finally meet her, & what he does then is funny too. Borat takes amazing driving lessons, & then they do a car lot routine that is the funniest one I have seen (even better than Kurt Russells USED CARS from the 1980's).
What makes this film work so well in addition to the travel theme is the UN-predictable behavior of Borat. This is so well done that at times, even the other actors seem surprised by what Cohen's character does. This film has spontaneity which is fantastic. Some of the spontaneity was accomplished through unorthodox filming but that is an illustration of comedic genius.
It has some strange sequences which you have to see the movie to believe. It also has a great comedic pace. It runs around 90 minutes which is what the most successful comedy films of all time usually ran. This means it doesn't bog down & if a sequence is in danger of being too long, it stops before that happens.
This film is well worth the 90 minutes, classic comedy done right.