You’d be hard-pressed to find another film from last year—or even the last few years—that’s as disgusting, rude, politically incorrect and offensive as Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. But we’re willing to bet that you wouldn’t be able to think of one that’s even remotely as funny either.
Borat Sagdiyev (Sacha Baron Cohen, Ali G in Da House) is a reporter from Kazakhstan who’s tasked with a mission by his government: To go to America, “the greatest country in the world,” and make a documentary about their culture. While there, however, Borat strays off his initial path when he falls in love with buxom babe Pamela Anderson (Baywatch) after seeing her on telly and decides to travel across the country to marry her.
Borat works on so many levels (we’re not kidding). The offensive elements of the show—most of which spawn from the main character’s own cultural ignorance and prejudice towards Jews—are so OTT that it’s impossible to take them seriously. And if that wasn’t enough, there’s also plenty of gross-out humor, the pinnacle of which is a nude fight scene between Borat and his rather tubby producer Azamat Bagatov (Ken Davitian, SWAT) in their hotel room. You may cringe at times and even groan in disgust—but you’ll definitely be laughing your asses off the whole way through.
While the character himself may have you in stitches, the funniest bits of the show, however, don’t come directly from Borat, but from the reactions he inspires from the Americans he meets during his travels. From drunken college frat boys, churchgoers and the redneck set—they all feel free to express their ignorant nature to the strange foreigner, resulting in some of the most hilarious and outright ugliness from the good ol’ US of A we’ve seen since Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine.
If you get past the public defecating, references to bestiality and the jokes about the size of women’s brains, you’ll find that Borat is one of the year’s smartest movies. This one’s a must-see at all cost.