If you are remotely politically correct then this isn’t for you. It plays crudely and entertainingly to just about every stereotype known to mankind and rather potently sends up the population of the United States. “Borat” is a local television presenter in Kazakhstan who has decided to go to the US in A and meet Pamela Anderson. Dragging his director “Azamat” (Ken Davitian) along, they take a circuitous route to New York and once he’s realised that the hotel elevator isn’t actually his room, they are on their way. He’s a friendly chap who wants to say hello, shake hands and kiss just about everyone he meets. Needless to say, this elicits a variety of unfriendly responses and so he buys an old ice cream van with his pal and decides to take a tour of the country ending up in California. Along the way he meets cowboys, evangelicals, gays, etiquette experts and even manages some naked wrestling, but will he meet and get his gal? It’s perhaps a little unfair to say this is anti-American specifically. I reckon if you travelled into the interior of many large countries where your mum, your dog and your canary might all the the same creature whilst “Duelling Banjos” is on repeat on the juke box, you’d get the same sort of insular responses, but somehow this seems exaggerated by some of the most ignorant and stupid people that he encounters en route. The condescension in which he’s viewed by some of the population, the rudeness and violence he encounters as well as the humorous hypocrisies don’t really show his hosts in a good light at any stage of his drive. Of course, he’s an obnoxious man whose anti-Semitic views, causal approach to violent sex and, indeed, his clumsy attempts at English all reinforce an Eastern European stereotype too, but that country had decades of Soviet occupation to blame. What’s the excuse of those in Texas whose intellect is only marginally greater than their cows. It’s excessive at times and the joke does start to wear a bit thin, but there’s something quite thought provoking about Sasha Baron Cohen’s character here that shines a critical light at jingoism and nationalism amusingly but poignantly. Perhaps he ought to get himself a job as a fact checker in the White House now?
