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

News: Sacha Baron Cohen

The star of the snappily-titled Borat: Cultural Learnings for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan has hardly been out of the news for the last couple of months, constantly plugging his latest movie as his alter ego – even prompting official rebuttals from the Kazakh Embassy in the US, swiftly countered by press conferences by Borat himself.

More recently, Baron Cohen himself, rather than his character, has been making headlines for the vast sums of money being thrown at him by Hollywood for his next project, based around the extroverted homosexual Bruno character from Da Ali G Show. Universal finally won the bidding with a whopping $42million, putting Baron Cohen firmly in the comedy A-list.

In the meantime, Baron Cohen has several other projects on the go, reprising his voice role from Madagascar in Madagascar 2, possibly appearing in Tim Burton’s much-anticipated Sweeny Todd alongside Helena bonham-Carter and Johnny Depp, and is still attached to two other films: as a Hasidic Jew turned heavy rocker called Curly in Curly Oxide and Vic Thrill and an idiotic walking disaster in – yes, another comedy – Dinner for Schmucks. Whether any of these will still see the light of day after the success of Borat remains to be seen…

News: Larry Charles

The director of this week’s mockumentary Borat, out today, is probably still best known as a writer for his work on the hugely successful sitcom Seinfeld and its even better semi-spin-off Curb Your Enthusiasm. It was on the latter, like Borat filmed in documentary style, that he honed his directorial teeth before taking on Sacha Baron Cohen’s most recent cinematic project, but only now has Hollywood started to come calling, with Charles next project being to co-write and direct This is America – like Borat, an exploration of the slightly odd under the surface of American culture.