"Borat" directed by Larry Charles [review]

Abstract

Sacha Baron Cohen is a man who’s used to offending people. For years now the gifted British comic has, in his hugely successful TV shows, created and masqueraded as a series of idiotic and hilarious caricature figures, most famously the sexist homeboy Ali G and the buffoonish TV host Borat Sagdiyev. Through these creations, Cohen has satirised not just the broad cultural types he’s playing with, but the gamut of reactions that they generate in others, as well. It’s a fascinating kind of comedy, predicated upon the comic’s cunning ability to catch his audience(s) entirely offguard. Cohen seems to be a master at it, and with this new film version of Borat he has brought his extraordinarily confronting comic gift to the big screen.