Borat

Lewd, raucous, offensive, and utterly hysterical are just some of the colorful adjectives that can be used to describe Sacha Baron Cohen’s new film “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.” Every second of this film pulsates with enough uproarious humor and off-the-wall antics that I can definitely see how someone could be turned off by the entire idea of it.

As for me, I liked “Borat” very much and it’s without a doubt one of the funniest films I’ve ever seen. People have criticized it for being “dumb” and “childish“, but that’s exactly the point Cohen is trying to make. Borat's ignorance and outright racist attitude are a large part of what makes this type of humor so effective. Whether it’s a group of “rednecks” or “frat boys“, he is able to expose people for the bigots they are, while demonstrating how little Americans really know about other cultures.

During this 82-minute "mockumentary", Cohen explores many different realms of American culture and his final result delivers more laughs than most comedies in recent memory. Borat Sagdiyev is a Kazakh journalist who embarks on a trip across America to get a real taste of what life in the United States is all about. He provides the audience with some intriguing information about his home country such as “This is Orkin. The town rapist! Naughty, Naughty!” and “Although Kazakhstan a glorious country, it have a problem, too: economic, social, and Jew (Cohen is Jewish).”

When he finally arrives in America, he has a hard time adjusting to the overall differences in lifestyle between Kazakhstan and the US. For instance, people don’t take kindly to his awkward greeting and refuse to offer him help in any way. Some of the best scenes involve Borat’s etiquette at a formal dinner party and his encounter with three drunken college students, which is responsible for many of the outrageous moments this film has to offer.

While in his hotel room one night, he discovers Pamela Anderson on the television and immediately falls in love with her. He then persuades his sidekick Azamat to let him travel to California in hopes of marrying Pamela in a traditional Kazakhstan wedding. In what is probably the funniest and-most disgusting scene-in the film, Borat and Azamat (both naked) begin to wrestle around the hotel room and eventually make their way to one of the conference rooms in which a meeting is being held. If you think intentionally offensive comments and sequences of naked wrestling are funny, this is definitely the film for you.

Regardless of whether it was scripted or not, “Borat” is well worth the price of admission and should satisfy anyone who enjoys biting social satire. Cohen is a comedic genius whose dedication to making this film as real as possible should be intensely applauded. For anyone who still doesn’t understand what all the hype is about, you really have to see it to believe it. The true brilliance lies in the fact that people see Borat as a Jew-hating racist and actually believe that Kazakh people are really like that. There is a part during the dinner party in which a woman proceeds to teach Borat how to use the toilet and I felt that incident pretty much summed up everything Cohen is actually trying to expose.

High Five!

- **** out of 4