89
Metascore
38 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Rolling StonePeter TraversRolling StonePeter TraversYou won't know what outrageous fun is until you see Borat. High-five!
- 100EmpireDan JolinEmpireDan JolinAbsurd, outrageous, gross, disturbing, insightful, and so funny it’ll burst half the blood vessels in your face.
- 91Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanEntertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanWhen Baron Cohen works without a net, he flies.
- 90VarietyVarietyUproariously funny mockumentary.
- 90Village VoiceJ. HobermanVillage VoiceJ. HobermanIndeed, the man who invented Borat is a masterful improviser, brilliant comedian, courageous political satirist, and genuinely experimental film artist. Borat makes you laugh but Baron Cohen forces you to think.
- 89Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovAustin ChronicleMarc SavlovThis feature-length expansion of Cohen's deliciously ridiculous character accomplishes what decades of Soviet propaganda failed to do: It points out and underscores issues of race, religious intolerance, classism, and all manner of very American social ills by giving the culprits just enough rope to hang themselves by their own petards (and then some).
- 80The Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttThe Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttThe 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.
- 80The New YorkerAnthony LaneThe New YorkerAnthony LaneIt is equipped, like an F-15 Eagle, to engage multiple targets at once.
- 75ReelViewsJames BerardinelliReelViewsJames BerardinelliThe variation keeps things fresh and the relatively short running length (less than 90 minutes) ensures that Borat doesn't overstay its welcome - even though when it's all done, we wish this absurd man might have lingered a little longer.
- 75PremiereJessica LetkemannPremiereJessica LetkemannBorat is, in many ways, an heir to the same kind of subversion of American norms that the transvestite Divine perfected in John Waters’ early films.