Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan Critic Reviews

A comic put-on of awe-inspiring crudity and death-defying satire and by a long shot the funniest film of the year. It is "Jackass" with a brain and Mark Twain with full frontal male nudity.Read the full review

Very nice. I like Borat very much. I think it is, as everybody has been saying, the funniest movie in years.Read the full review

When Baron Cohen works without a net, he flies.Read the full review

With his corrosive brand of take-no-prisoners humor that scalds on contact, Cohen is the most intentionally provocative comedian since Lenny Bruce and early Richard Pryor, with a difference. For unlike those predecessors, there is a mean-spiritedness, an every-man-for-himself coldness about his humor. The one kind of laughter you won't find in Borat is that which acknowledges shared humanity. Instead, there is that pitiless staple of reality TV, watching others humiliate themselves for our viewing pleasure.Read the full review

The variation keeps things fresh and the relatively short running length (less than 90 minutes) ensures that Borat doesn't overstay its welcome - even though when it's all done, we wish this absurd man might have lingered a little longer.Read the full review

You won't know what outrageous fun is until you see Borat. High-five!Read the full review

It's screamingly, hysterically, laugh-through-the-next-joke, laugh-for-the-next-week funny. It's so inventive…This is a film by an original and significant comic intelligence.Read the full review

Wildly funny. Its best jokes approach some savage, atavistic core of cultural taboo and make the viewer wonder: Is it really possible to laugh at this? But by the time you formulate that question, it's too late: You're already laughing.Read the full review

The weapon wielded by Cohen and Charles is crudeness. People today, especially those in public life, can disguise prejudice in coded language and soft tones. Bigotry is ever so polite now. So the filmmakers mean to drag the beast out into the sunlight of brilliant satire and let everyone see the rotting, stinking, foul thing for what it is. When you laugh at something that is bad, it loses much of its power.Read the full review