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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 57.66%
Worth A Look: 12.96%
Average: 6.2%
Pretty Bad: 5.47%
Total Crap: 17.7%
14 reviews, 464 user ratings
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| Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan |
by Scott Weinberg
"One of the funniest movies ever made. Yes, ever."

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SCREENED AT THE 2006 TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL: Name your cliche: Side-splitting, tear-inducing, had-me-in-stitches, whatever. Sacha Baron Cohen's "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" is one of the funniest, ballsiest, and most shockingly outrageous comedies I've ever seen. And I've seen thousands.Those familiar with Cohen's Da Ali G Show are no doubt already crazy about Khazak news reporter Borat. As I stated in my review of Ali's Volume 2 DVD, "So convincing is Cohen's portrayal of the character that he often gets his interview subjects to lower their guard, and when that happens ... hilariously embarrassing things are bound to happen. (Watch how easy it is for Borat to get a bar full of Arizonians to sing along with "Throw the Jew Down the Well!")"
So going into the feature-length Borat adventure, I already knew I was in for (at least) a few chuckles. I was underestimating the flick by about 65 laughs.
Lensed in a slyly effective low-budget documentary style, Borat focuses on Khazakstan's favorite (fictional) son as he hits New York City, falls immediately in love with Pamela Anderson, and begins an impromptu trek across the country. Along the way he meets with politicians, socialites, prostitutes, frat boys, cowboys, and homosexuals -- all of whom manage to give Borat an extra-special taste of what "America" is all about.
Fair warning, though: This is not some puffy little road movie full of enlightenment and warmth. What the Borat character does is so slickly smart (and smoothly amusing) ... I'm beginning to suspect that Sacha Baron Cohen might be a satirist on par with Swift, Bruce, Kaufman and anyone else who makes the deflation of societal ugliness his main target in life.
Some might take offense to some of the material found in Borat, as it's rife with jokes about nasty old Jewish stereotypes and the "inequality" of woman and the like. Me, I choose to look at it a different way (and with a name like Weinberg, I'm obviously Jewish) -- Borat's absurdity and ignorance serves a reflection of our own, only Cohen take great pleasure in pointing out how moronic racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism truly are. Plus his "backwoods foreigner" routine really does bring out the latent ugliness in a lot of people. (Watch how Cohen subtly extracts some horrifically unkind gay-bashing from a "normal Joe" cowboy dude.)
But it's not all socio-political satire and alarmingly sly commentary; Borat is packed with every flavor of humor under the sun: satire, spoof, slapstick, and scatalogical schtick are thrown onto the screen at every opportunity. Plus the flick has THE funniest battle between two naked men that you'll ever see. Or want to see.Frankly I laughed more often during "Borat" than I have at all of 2006's multiplex comedies combined. It's so shockingly, brazenly funny that I'm stunned to see a studio like Fox embrace the flick. Here's hoping they don't trim one second of its 82 minutes before its theatrical release.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=14895&reviewer=128 originally posted: 09/09/06 05:02:36
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OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2006 Toronto Film Festival For more in the 2006 Toronto Film Festival series, click here.
TV to Screen: For more in the TV to Screen series, click here.
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USA 03-Nov-2006 (R) DVD: 06-Mar-2007
UK 03-Nov-2006 (15)
Australia 23-Nov-2006 (MA)
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