Sacha Baron Cohen’s Kazakh journalist arrives in America with a documentary crew and a mission. Borat Sagdiyev is meant to study the culture of the United States for the benefit of his homeland. What he actually does is wander the country, meet real people in real situations, and let his behavior do the work.
Trailer, via HdDvdMovies.
Borat Sagdiyev Lands in America
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan runs 84 minutes. Larry Charles directed it. Baron Cohen wrote the script with Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham, Dan Mazer and Todd Phillips. The tagline is blunt: “Come to Kazakhstan, it’s nice!”
The premise is a travelogue. Borat crosses the nation, and the people he meets are not actors. Their reactions are the movie. His backward behavior draws strong responses, and those responses expose prejudices and hypocrisies in American culture.
That structure is the whole trick, and it holds up.
Azamat and the Road
Borat’s producer Azamat is played by Ken Davitian. Their partnership gives the film its engine. Luenell appears as Luenell. Pamela Anderson, Bob Barr and Alan Keyes all show up as themselves, uncredited.
The production credits name roles that tell you what kind of movie this is. Alex Daniels is the Naked Fight Coordinator. Jim Vickers is the Kidnapping Consultant. Peewee Piemonte is credited for Saftey. Michael Li, Harry Wowchuk and Nicole Randall make up the Action Team.
Those titles are not jokes. They are job descriptions.
The Documentary Frame
The film’s method is its meaning. Borat is a fake journalist walking through a real country, and the documentary frame lets strangers say what they might not say otherwise. The comedy comes from the gap between what Borat is and what people assume he is.
That gap is where the movie finds its targets. The humor lands hardest when the person on screen is not in on it.
Where the Film Slips
Not every stop earns its place. An 84-minute runtime gives the film little room to breathe, and some encounters play as spectacle rather than argument. The shock gets a laugh. The point gets lost.
The film also ages in ways its makers could not control. What read as exposure in 2006 now reads, in stretches, as a stunt performed on people who did not sign up for it.
What the Audience Score Says
The TMDB audience score is 6.8 out of 10 across 6,160 votes. That number is fair. The film is sharp, committed and genuinely funny in its best passages. It is also uneven, and its method raises questions it never answers.
The Verdict on 84 Minutes
Baron Cohen built something durable here. The character outlasted the movie. The movie is worth the 84 minutes.
Numbers That Matter
- Title: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
- Year: 2006
- Director: Larry Charles
- Runtime: 84 minutes
- Genre: Comedy
- Score: 6.8 out of 10 (TMDB audience score, 6,160 votes)
- Tagline: “Come to Kazakhstan, it’s nice!”
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
