You will go to work the next day with blood-shot eyes and cracked-ribs, but will never be able to stop giggling.

Rating: 8/10 (3 November 2006)

It almost seems like a million years ago that Sacha Baron Cohen's first ever insemination of the mock-interviewer, Ali G, was born out of the sporadically humorous "11 O'Clock Show". His 'yoof' approach to asking a former CIA operative question like "Does you ave to be intelligent to be in da CIA? Ain't dat a bit racialist dough? What if you're thick an you wanna get in?" was arguably his funniest period with the character, as his spin off shows, and subsequent movie, over-fed us the increasingly waning joke. The movie in particular, Ali G In Da House, had its moments, albeit very fleetingly, but was overall a complete washout compared to the riotous nature of that characters interviews with real people. Inside a fictional world, Ali was as crazy as the rest of it, and didn't seem like such a moron any more. Cohen's American takeover, at first, simply seemed like a cynical way of milking the cash cow even further, as most Brits had worked out by now that they were NOT being interviewed by real people, but by the creations inside Cohen's head. Granted some people still found his persona's intriguing, and the introduction of both Borat, the Kazakh reporter and Bruno the Austrian homosexual, managed to keep the fire going a little bit longer. But it still wasn't the laugh riot Cohen had us in at the beginning. So why then, is Borat the movie such a head-spinning, vain-popping, rib-cracking laugh-riot? Well there are two main reasons: America is quite a weird place after all, and instead of creating the weak fictional world that he did for Ali G In Da House, Cohen and friends have stuck with the documentary style of film making to capture the genuine and riotous reactions of all our fictional interviewer's hapless conquests.
It would be easy for me to say that this film uncovers home truths about certain American ways of thinking, but it would hardly be fair, since Cohen & Friends would never keep the duller interviews. The story of the piece goes: Borat, a television reporter from Kazakhstan, decides to up and leave his hometown for a huge report about the United States of America. His goal is to hopefully discover and incorporate all that makes America great, interviewing the locals, politicians and workers in this glorious nation. Among his problems include his blatant anti-Semitism, which gets him in more than a spot of bother on at least one occasion, and his unapologetic misogynistic views, that come to the fore in a hilarious interview with a group of feminists. As he delves into the Deep South, he is accused of "looking so conspicuous" by a cowboy rodeo-attendee, whom also advises him to "shave that darned moustache off" since it makes him look "like one of them Muslim fellas".
When one actually considers whether this film has achieved greatness or not, it is appropriate to examine the source, and value, of its comedy. There is at least one sequence, which I shall not give away, that was so pain-inducingly funny, that it literally had me gasping for air. The rest of the film could have been completely worthless and I would still have paid a worthy a cause, because of this one particular sequence. Much of the comedy is not so much witty, as it is gross or just bravery on Cohen's part. Who else would do things like try to enrage an entire stadium of cowboy hicks by singing a putrid version of Borat's own national anthem? But I have to be fair and say that Cohen is not a great comedian, yet sometimes, great comedy doesn't necessarily take all the great laughs. Watching Borat is, at times, a poignant experience about how certain members of the world's only superpower genuinely think. It is only a fleeting thought, mind you, as the creation of Borat is, unto itself, none-too-less racist a man then one who doesn't like the look of those "darned Muslim fellas" Mostly though, it is toilet humour done in an extremely funny way. It is hard to fault a film, which has been praised by the right wing as an indictment and eschewal of political correctness, and by the left wing for being an indictment of the prejudices and unsavoury opinions of "Middle America". For the rest of us, lets praise this for what it is: Unadulterated, non-PC sidesplitting hilarity.