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

As Borat Sagdiyev, a visitor from Kazakhstan, Sacha Baron Cohen is a balls-out comic revolutionary, right up there with Lenny Bruce, Andy Kaufman, Dr. Strangelove, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Cartman at exposing the ignorant, racist, misogynist, gay-bashing, Jew-hating, gun-loving, warmongering heart of America. Borat will make you laugh till it hurts, and youll still beg for more.

Borat, subtitled Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, sneaks up on you. Or it will if youre not part of the cult spawned when HBO premiered Cohens Da Ali G Show in 2003, and Americans first encountered the inspired British comic who hid behind a series of alter egos. His gangsta journalist Ali G tricked politicians (Newt Gingrich, Boutros Boutros-Ghali) and pundits (Gore Vidal, Andy Rooney) into embarrassing and revealing interviews. His Bruno, a gay fashion commentator with a Nazi fetish, claimed to be the voice of Austrian youth. And then theres Borat, the smiling, shamelessly offensive TV reporter from Kazakhstan who takes pride that his sister is the number-four prostitute in all of country where a ritual the running of the Jew is celebrated every year (There you go, kids, crush that Jew egg before it hatches). Kazakhstan is the ninth-largest country in the world, but Cohen is counting on the fact that most Americans know squat about it or him. For the record, Cohen, 35, is nothing like Borat, Bruno, Ali G or Jean Girard, the gay French Formula Un driver who kissed Will Ferrell full on the lips in Talladega Nights. Cohen is a Cambridge scholar from a middle-class and devout Jewish family. Their son, the second of three, wrote his history thesis on the role of Jews in the American civil-rights movement. Not since Little Red Riding Hood have the unsuspecting been duped so hilariously by a big, bad wolf in sheeps clothing.

Borat is such a mind-blowing comedy classic in the making (seeing it once is just not enough) that Cohens cover will surely be blown after the movie opens. But during the time it took Cohen to put Borats journey on film with director Larry Charles (he debuted with Bob Dylans Masked and Anonymous, a title that would also fit snugly here), people lined up, signed releases and bought the scam: that Borat, with his pubic patch of a mustache, his unwashed gray suit, his butchered English and his blatant bigotry, really was a roving Kazakh citizen doing a documentary on American culture.

OK, not everyone bought it. The government of Kazakhstan was appalled at seeing its country depicted as a place where men treat women as slaves, screw their sisters and swill wine made from horse piss. No wonder the Kazakh scenes were shot in Romania. Not too much rape and humans only, Borat helpfully tells a friend as he leaves his village for America, carrying a vial of gypsy tears to prevent AIDS. Cohen makes primo slapstick out of all the silliness, but its his merciless knack for Swiftian satire that gives Borat its remarkable staying power. Theres something cathartic about laughs that stick in your throat.

Dont be fooled by how this demonically devious mockumentary looks (as wonderfully tacky as an $18 million budget will allow) or how its organized (clever masked as haphazard), the film doesnt waste one of its eighty-nine minutes. The script that Cohen wrote with Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham and Dan Mazer tells us that Borat has a hidden agenda for coming to America. Hes seen Baywatch and wants to take the virgin Pamela Anderson as his bride. When Borat catches his fat producer Azamat (Ken Davitian) jerking off to photos of Pam, he engages the hairy beast in a naked ass-to-mouth wrestling match that could set back screen nudity for decades. If you dont upchuck, the scene is uproarious and kicks off Borats journey across America in an ice-cream truck (dont ask) to find his muse.

Will Borat get his sexytime with Pam and have his hoped-for romantic explosion on her stomach? Ill never tell. And I dont have to, because the core of this movie its raison detre is who and what Borat encounters along the way. No aspect of prejudice, hypocrisy, arrogance and stupidity is overlooked.

At a rodeo in Virginia, Borat is greeted with cheers when he tells the crowd, We support your war of terror, and then hypes them up more by longing for the day that Premier George W. Bush will drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq.

At a gun store he asks the owner for the best gun for killing Jews and is told that a 9mm or a 45 will do just fine. He settles for a live bear. Terrified at having to sleep overnight at the home of a kindly Jewish couple, Borat believes that two cockroaches crawling under the door are the Jews transformed. To make them go away, he throws money at them. And so it goes, with Borats antics extending to a frat-boy boozefest, a Pentecostal church rally, a classy dinner party down South in which he is taught the formal art of toilet training and a confab with feminists who seem startled by the well-known fact in Kazakhstan that the brain of a woman is the size of a squirrels. On the debit side, the attempt to snatch Anderson at a book-signing feels staged, as if the movie had suffered a brush with Hollywood. But the brush is quick and far from fatal. Cohens total immersion in his character is a wonder to behold. If Oscar voters have any sense, they recognize his performance for what it is: a tour de force that sets off comic and cosmic explosions in your head. You wont know what outrageous fun is until you see Borat. High-five!