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Avg. Critic Score: 89 out of 100 Universal acclaim Metascore^® based on all critic reviews

Information for Parents:

Iffy for 15+

Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

100

Rolling Stone | Peter Travers
You won't know what outrageous fun is until you see Borat. High-five! Read full review
100

Washington Post | Ann Hornaday
The result is a perfect combination of slapstick and satire, a Platonic ideal of high-and lowbrow that manages to appeal to our basest common denominators while brilliantly skewering racism, anti-Semitism, sexism and that peculiarly American affliction: we're-number-one-ism. Read full review
100

San Francisco Chronicle | Mick LaSalle
It's screamingly, hysterically, laugh-through-the-next-joke, laugh-for-the-next-week funny. It's so inventiveThis is a film by an original and significant comic intelligence. Read full review
100

Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert
Very nice. I like Borat very much. I think it is, as everybody has been saying, the funniest movie in years. Read full review
91

Entertainment Weekly | Owen Gleiberman
When Baron Cohen works without a net, he flies. Read full review
90

Variety |
Uproariously funny mockumentary. Read full review
90

The New York Times | Manohla Dargis
The brilliance of Borat is that its comedy is as pitiless as its social satire, and as brainy. Read full review
88

USA Today | Claudia Puig
Borat is most gloriously funny moving picture for to make people see their stupidness. Read full review
80

The Hollywood Reporter | Kirk Honeycutt
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 full review
80

Los Angeles Times | Kenneth Turan
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 full review

Metacritic link View more reviews for Borat on Metacritic

Information for Parents

Common Sense Media says Iffy for 15+ Brace yourself -- Borat is here. Not for kids.

What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that teens are definitely going to want to see this movie because it has been promoted non-stop on MTV, Comedy Central, Saturday Night Live, among others. It stars cult sensation Sacha Baron Cohen of Da Ali G Show. It's undeniably raunchy, vulgar, and funny; Baron Cohen uses his character Borat to expose the effects of ignorance by targeting ignorant behavior. But unless you want to dive under your seat or clap your hands over their eyes and ears, this is absolutely not kid entertainment. Fake "reporter" Borat lampoons Americans' sexism, racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, religious intolerance, classism, and ageism by putting people on the spot and peppering them with questions. The movie is full of stuff like naked men wrestling (an extended, rather explicit sequence); visual gags about prostitution, feminism, and marriage (a wife's death is celebrated); toilet humor (literally); and some physical fighting/clumsiness. Jokes aimed at U.S. popular culture and beliefs include references to Baywatch, Michael Jackson, "Dirty Harold," Pentecostal church practices, Jews, rodeos/cowboys, etiquette, patriotic pride, hip-hop culture, and college fraternities. Language includes "f--k," "c--k," "s--t," "ass," "p---y," and just about anything else you can imagine (some in subtitles).

Families can talk about deliberately offensive humor. Does Borat's mockery of ignorance and prejudice help the people he targets understand his point, or are they clueless "victims" of his humor? What point is the movie trying to make?
Ask your kids if they think viewers who identify with some of the intolerant/over-earnest people Borat interviews will see themselves in a new light. Or will they feel upset by the on-screen encounters?
Does the satire help or simply entertain? How can you tell the difference?

The good stuff

Positive messages: The movie's comedic point is to target intolerance, vulgarity, and classism/racism, which are revealed as Borat interacts with regular U.S. citizens. Borat's own misogynistic, socially unacceptable behavior is all part of his act.
Positive role models: Although the point is not to act like Borat, kids may misunderstand and try to emulate Borat's stunts.

What to watch for

Violence: Broad, slapsticky violence (wrestling, etc.); Borat commends the United States' military actions in Iraq; a horse falls down; a bear roars at children and scares them.
Sex: Frequent body parts on display (cleavage, men and women in underwear or naked); Borat calls a 900 sex line (nothing explicit); verbal references to sex acts ("sexy time," offers to buy women on the street) and body parts ("vagina," "c--k," "hair from pubis"); allusions to homosexual acts ("rubber fist in my anus"); a prolonged scene in which Borat and Azamat wrestle, naked (penises are blocked out, but scrotums are explicitly set in each other's faces); frequent sexual slang and conversation (Borat's misogyny is a running joke); Borat has a date with a prostitute (pretty tame, but mention of paying for sex); references to a car being a "p---y magnet" photos show Borat's son's penis, full frontal.
Language: Some profanity, including "f--k," "s--t," "ass," "c--k," and "son of a bitch," plus occasional colorful phrases ("Eat my t-ts").
Consumerism: Devotion to all things Baywatch. Borat appreciates the materialism and luxury of the United States, as compared to his run-down village in Kazakhstan.
Drinking, drugs and smoking: Drinking, references to drugs.

Common Sense Media An independent nonprofit dedicated to providing families the information they need to help kids thrive in a world of media and technology. © Common Sense Media Inc. 2010. All rights reserved.