Review: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

UK Release: 2nd November 2006

For those unfamiliar with Borat, he is a leading Kazakhstani journalist who, for this project, travels America learning about its culture. He is also a complete fabrication, the work of Ali G creator Sacha Baron Cohen.

Thus his scatological but hilarious investigation includes a scene in which he attends a posh dinner party and returns from the bathroom with his excrement in a plastic bag and presents it to the hostess. He also destroys a Civil War memorabilia shop and lets loose a chicken on the New York subway.

A minor niggle is that close examination shows that at least a handful of the sequences might have been set up to some degree. And in cinematic terms it is absolutely nothing special: there’s no real reason for it to be a movie at all — its natural home may well be on DVD. But as an example of a comedian willing to take absurd risks for his art, it’s probably never going to be surpassed.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 83mins

Review by Adam Smith