Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
★★★½ — Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
There's a moment in Borat where Sacha Baron Cohen's hapless Kazakhstani journalist teaches a crowd of unsuspecting rodeo-goers a fake national anthem to the tune of the American one, and they sing along. Cheerfully. Enthusiastically. That image kind of sums up the whole film: deeply, almost painfully funny, genuinely uncomfortable, and sharper than it has any right to be given that a large chunk of it involves a man in a grey suit waddling around America asking strangers about their pubic hair.
Baron Cohen is absolutely committed here, and that commitment is everything. Borat isn't really a character so much as a battering ram, a deliberately clueless, casually bigoted outsider who barges into real situations with no filter and no shame, and then just... waits to see what falls out. The format sounds simple but the execution is relentless. You're cringing, laughing, covering your eyes, sometimes all three at once, and barely pausing for breath between.
What lifts it above pure shock comedy, though, is the satirical target. The film isn't really about Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is the costume. What Borat is actually about is America: its prejudices, its politeness that curdles into complicity, its willingness to agree with absolutely anything if the person saying it seems confident enough. The joke is almost never just on Borat. It's on the dinner party guests who smile through genuinely awful statements. It's on the car dealership that happily obliges every bizarre request. It's on anyone who nods along because the alternative feels rude. "Tradition" becomes a running gag, and it's a sharp one: a punchline about how much nonsense people accept without question if you dress it up as custom.
I won't pretend every bit lands, or that the ethics of some of the pranks don't nag at you a little. A few of the targets feel less like they're being exposed and more like they've just been ambushed, and that distinction matters. There are also moments that cross lines in ways that aren't really serving the satire, just there for the shock of it. And the second half does drag in places, certain bits stretched out past where the joke was already made, some gags feeling like variations on ones you've already seen. It's a messy film. It knows it's a messy film.
But the hits far outweigh the misses, and the audacity of the whole enterprise is genuinely impressive. This is comedy that's willing to be uncomfortable in the service of something real, and that's rarer than it should be. It reminds me a little of what I enjoy about Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, in that it's built around a performance so fully committed to an absurd persona that you'd follow it almost anywhere, but Borat has a harder edge because the idiots surrounding the lead aren't actors playing idiots. They're just people, being themselves, and that's the point.
It's deliberately tasteless, occasionally genuinely uncomfortable, and uneven enough that I understand people who bounce off it entirely. But the sharpness underneath the chaos is real. A clown suit with something worth saying inside it. I also watched the sequel, which he also stars in, and while that one has its own interesting qualities, there's something about this original that still feels like lightning caught in a bottle, chaotic and specific to its moment in a way that's hard to replicate.
Three and a half stars.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2006 | Watched: 2025-08-29
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Disney Plus
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube · Fandango At Home
Buy: Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube · Fandango At Home
Physical: Amazon US
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Related on Movies With Macca
More with Sacha Baron Cohen: Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2020)
More from United Kingdom: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) · Blue (1993)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
