Bore-at: cultural earnings of America for make Sasha Baron Cohen a lot of money

Is top cyclist and Peter Schmeichel lookalike Alexander Vinokourov in danger of losing
his status as Kazakhstan's greatest citizen to Borat?

On the strength of the film probably not.
Having been amused by the Borat TV show and seen the sparkling reviews in the press (most papers using the 5 star rating system awarded it 3 or 4 stars) I went to see this film in anticipation of a good time. However disappointment ensued.

The film sets out to be part mockumentary, part road movie, but ends up as little more than a collection of recycled sketches like an elongated version of the TV show. The jokes are largely predictable, and although the film would probably appeal more to someone unfamilar with the Ali G/Borat spoof interview format - it doesn't translate particularly well to the big screen

The opening scenes filmed somewhere in rural Romania not surprisingly portray Kazakhstan as a backwards nation of primitive Jew-baiting, incestuous misogynists rather than a confident oil and gas rich state which has successfully shaken off the chains of Soviet subjugation.

In the run-up to the film's release, a headline in one of the free London papers given out in the street read something to the effect of "Borat film causes uproar in Eastern Europe". A Financial Times columnist subsequently reacted to this error as if to confirm that few people really know where the place is let alone anything about it. It is therefore rich pickings for comic satire. However, to be pedantic a tiny portion of Kazakhstan lying west of the Ural River is technically in Europe. The national soccer team is a member of UEFA, the European football federation, and thus plays in the European section of the World Cup qualifiers. An unimportant piece of trivia, but there you go.

My main problem with the film is the difficulty of telling which parts are staged and which parts are for real - ie how many of the ordinary people Borat interviews are actually in on the joke? I suspect that most of the were.

Borat's initial arrival in America plays on the familiar theme of the yokel in the big city. He struggles to get to grips with an escalator and randomly greets total strangers in the street in scenes blatantly ripped off from Midnight Cowboy and Crocodile Dundee.

Baron Cohen as a Jewish comedian can get away with jokes others couldn't - jokes which sound anti-semitic to the uninitiated are in fact supposed to be post-modern irony - in the mould of another Jewish comedian Lenny Bruce who made ironic anti-PC jokes before political correctness had been invented. The scenes of the Running of the Jew with grotesque effigies of Jews with horns chasing Kazakhs in the mould of Pamplona's running of the bulls festival was particularly effective in this regard.
The film does have its moments. One scene at a rodeo where Borat as guest of honour mangles the American national anthem at a rodeo exposes bigotry of redneck Americans baying for blood. The homophobic rodeo manager advises him to shave off moustache so as to avoid looking like Islamic terrorist.

If anything the films has helped boost the profile of Kazakhstan, a country so little is known about and may even provoke a sense of curiosity for people to find out just how inaccurate Borat's depiction of the country is.

Baron Cohen himself is a notoriously secretive character who as far as I know has never appeared in public as himself. Now that his two main characters Ali and Borat have effectively blown their cover it will be interesting to see what he does next. He will no doubt be inundated with offers from top Hollywood producers to star in substandard films, but whether he accepts them is a different matter.