The character of Borat got people to say things they wouldn’t normally have said in public—and in front of a camera. And he revealed a lot of many U.S. stereoypes about “foreigners” across socioeconomic statuses.

I just felt let down because I thought this could have had a much stronger impact, but the style and format lost most of what the film was actually trying to say in jokes such as guy-on-guy-naked-hotel fighting scenes.

I guess I slightly fall to the worth consuming side, but not without feeling conflicted…

Next time I grow up this the Borat like

that’s totally how I’ll be me, Yeah so funny.

my eyes leak and I smile till the hurting and more!

We went to see this and while there were very funny parts, my immediate reaction was a sort of bad aftertaste. There were enough scenes that were offensive, distasteful, or simply over the top that I didn’t really enjoy it as an experience.

Later as we talked about the parts we liked I regained a sense of liking it, but I think it could have used a bunch of editting. Most of the scenes were over the top and didn’t quit soon enough.

As we left the room, we passed another theater and heard the kind of laughter I was expecting to have done while watching Borat. The movie was Little Miss Sunshine and at first I thought it was laughter on the movie track. It was THAT loud.

We went back the next night and saw that movie and liked it better than Borat.

ok so it’s totally not PC, but it had me absolutely creased up.

.

It was one of the best movies i have ever seen. Great sense of humour maybe a bit cruel but I think Kazakhstan people will forgive him. I was laughing from the start till the end. Really funny. Borat had fun from everyone, gays, American patriots, feminists, even TV reporters and more… Trust me, this movie is more about America, than about Kazakhstan. A must-see movie!

Don’t be shocked!

It’s a different documentary style than Michael Moore and Rick Mercier.

I think part of the experience is hearing how many people laugh at the movie theatre.

Outrageous, some of it went by with my eyes closed, my fists clenched. Funny, but in a disturbing way.

I liked it, but I wouldn’t consume it again…

In The Week (December 8, 2006):

“Sacha Baron Cohen is a product of the Holocaust, says Neil Strauss in Rolling Stone. The grandson of a Holocaust surivivor, the British comedian is a devout Jew who keeps kosher and observes the Sabbath. But as the faux Kazakh journalist Borat in the hit movie fo the same name, he’s wildly, even absurdly anti-Semitic—making some viewers and the Anti-Defamation League wonder if he’s taken the joke too far. Not so, says Baron Cohen. *”Borat essentially works as a tool," he says. “By himself being anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice.”* Baron Cohen first plumbed that prejudice when he led a laughing, raucous crowd at a bar in Tucson in singing “Throw the Jew Down the Well” for a famous segment on this TV show. He found that the audience’s enthusiastic rendering of the chorus spoke volumes. “Did it reveal that they were anti-Semitic? Perhaps. But maybe it just revealed that they were indifferent to anti-Semitism.” That, he says, is a lesson that needs remembering. “When I was in university, there was this major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw, who said, ‘The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.’ I know it’s not very funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but it’s an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be apathetic.”

It is just overrated and not that funny.

Laughed my ass off. Great movie to see in the theatre! Some women didn’t like it but I found it hilarious!!! Such a true snapshot of America.

Borat – mildly amusing. Glad I saw it, now I’m not wondering what I missed.

I can’t believe that I just read a quote from a viewer that said “I may have just seen the funniest movie ever made.” If you think this is the funniest movie you ever saw….you must really be deprived…That makes me feel pity.

I’ve never seen any of Cohen’s work before. I only went to the movie theater to see this movie because my husband wanted to check it out.

I went in with an open mind – wanting to have a good laugh at some purportedly outrageous sketches and hilarious antics (I thought it might be similar to the old Tom Green show, Kevin Smith type stuff, or Jackass movies—which were always hilarious)…and was really disappointed. I felt it was mildly humourous at times, at best. The auditorium was mostly quiet, only a few laughs and chuckles were heard…and I feel others, like myself were almost bored during certain parts of the film. The biggest rise out of the audience came when Borat and his producer got into a naked wrestling match on the bed in their hotel room…everyone was making sounds of disgust and feigned wretching sounds.

Basically this is 84 minutes of my time I’ll never get back.

I probably would’ve watched this on cable…but paying to see it in a theater was a total waste. The admission for two would’ve been better spent on Cat Litter…

With a loose documentary frame we follow Sacha Baron Cohen’s fictional character Borat as he travels across the United States. While on the surface it’s broad and often low humour, there is a brilliant core of social satire delivered by a naive sexist, racist, homophobic and anti-semitic main character. It seems to be the standard shocking real people with a fictional character, but the targets and approaches are anything by accidental with some of the most revealing glimpses into the socio-economic structure of contemporary culture. But it’s still very funny in a very inappropriate way. I laughed a lot, but at times I was horrified at the revelations that Borat’s victims made about prejudice. Sacha Baron Cohen is a gifted satirist who has a rock-solid grasp on his characters that never wavers. Within the film he manages to make his points as he travels and meets real people as well tying together the fictional narrative arc where he wants to travel to California to marry Pamela Anderson. It’s amazing to see how well it ties everything together to make a coherent story. With direction by Larry Charles of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm the structure contains and amplifies the antics of a character from short sketches into something that becomes much more.

I may have just seen the funniest movie ever made. Not the best comedy ever, but the funniest. This movie is the reason the word hysterical was created not to mention the words outrageous, offensive and subversive. Borat is a comedic masterpiece; a wonderfully surreal example of guerrilla filmmaking that borders on being performance art rather than an actual movie. Sacha Baron Cohen gives arguably the greatest comedy performance I have ever seen. He is fearless in a way never seen on film before, refusing to break character regardless of the circumstances or their consequnces. I laughed and at times I hated myself for it, but in the end, after you’re finished laughing, it makes you think and that is the true mark of perfection in satire.