Borat: The new Hollywood darling

By Andy Goldberg Nov 1, 2006, 10:35 GMT

10/25/2006 - Sacha Baron Cohen - Borat Movie Premiere in London - Arrivals - Odeon Leicester Square - London, England © Photorazzi

Los Angeles - Forget about Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Ashton Kutcher. The hottest male star in US cinema this autumn is none other than the identity-morphing British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.

Who? You might know Cohen better as Borat Sagdiyev, the misogynistic, homophobic, anti-Semitic and perpetually-randy TV reporter from Kazakhstan. You know the guy. He's the language- mangling correspondent who prances around in a bright green bathing suit that leaves nothing to the imagination, batters at the White House gates demanding to see the President and who also happens to star in the must-see movie of the season Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

The film has made the Cambridge-educated Cohen public enemy number one in Kazakhstan, which is depicted in the edgy spoof as the most primitive place on earth.

The movie opens with Borat taking viewers on a tour of his home village as he sets off to the 'U.S. and A.' to make a documentary for Kazakh TV. There's a cow living inside his house, a sister with whom he enjoys an incestuous farewell grope and Boris, 'the village mechanic and abortionist.'

That part of the movie is scripted. But once in America, Cohen unleashes Borat and his provocative ways on unsuspecting Americans, always staying in character as hilarity and idiocy unfold.

He begins by opening a suitcase full of chickens on a New York subway and continues by praising 'George Walter Bush' and his 'war of terror' at a rodeo. He brings a black hooker as his guest to a posh southern dinner party, and has an argument with his producer that ends with them wrestling naked through their hotel and a convention of insurance salesmen.

Together the gags form a savagely funny road trip movie as Borat makes his way across the country to meet Pamela Anderson and hopefully snare her in his traditional Kazakh 'wedding sack.'

Rarely in recent years has a comedy premiered to such enthusiastic reviews in the US - though that is never a guarantee of box office success. Still, from high-brow to low, Borat's ability to blend slapstick with razor-sharp social satire could launch a huge hit.

'The audience with whom I saw the movie wasn't laughing so much as howling,' noted a reviewer in the intellectually rigorous Village Voice. 'Borat makes you laugh but Baron Cohen forces you to think.'

Film industry bible Variety called it an 'uproariously funny mockumentary,' while rival The Hollywood Reporter was just as effusive.

'This year you are not going to find a more appalling, tasteless, grotesque, politically incorrect or slanderous film,' it noted. 'You probably won't laugh as hard all year either.'

The Los Angeles Times said that Borat 'slays inhibitions like cheap tequila,' while the New York Daily News was so impressed with Cohen's portrayal of the bigoted peasant reporter that it proposed him for a best actor Oscar.

That may or may not happen. But Hollywood has taken note. Universal Studios won a bidding war this week, paying over 42 million dollars for the distribution rights to film's sequel.

That movie will star Cohen as another of his alter-egos, gay fashion victim Bruno. A supposed Austrian TV reporter, Bruno gets people to say outrageous things about the fashion world, such as condemning the unstylish to concentration camps.

But while audiences in the US may split their sides, the government of Kazakhstan is not amused. It took out a four page ad in the New York Times railing against the inaccuracies contained in the movie. It also posted a Borat fact page on its website and has now even invited him on a fact-finding tour of the country.

You can understand the concern in the Kazakh capital Astana at being mocked in what may turn out to be the biggest hit of the year. But really, everyone can see that the joke is not on the glorious nation of Kazakhstan but rather on the world's great superpower and its strange ways.

'The giant moustache, the mesh underwear, the car dragged by mules, the wine made of fermented horse urine - sure, it seems as if comedian Sacha Baron Cohen is mocking Kazakhstan,' Time magazine humourist Joel Stein explained to his American readers. 'He is not. He's mocking you.'