Borat sends up anti-Semitism, and it would be a mistake to take his outrageousness as anti-Semitism itself, as some will be prone to do. Cohen is Jewish and knows very well what he is doing. He is ridiculing anti-Semites who would hold such events as “running of the Jews,” fearing kindly Jews who run a bed and breakfast place in the U.S or going into a gun store to buy a weapon to defend himself against Jews. All of this is in the context of making Borat a hapless looking guy who puts on those he meets with outrageous behavior in scene after scene that will have most audiences in stitches.

He travels with his producer Azamat, portrayed hilariously as a fat slob of a guy by Ken Davitian. When they have a battle royal with nudity the positions in which they find themselves are as riotously funny as they are vulgar.

Borat wants to eventually reach California to meet Pamela Anderson, on whom he has a crush and whom he is intent on wedding. But much of the humor comes from culture clash, that of a Kazakhstan hick learning the ways of America and Americans and his being so ignorant that he doesn’t even know how to use an American toilet and thinks a hotel elevator is meant to be his room. I won’t spill more gags, as it would spoil the fun of encountering Borat’s misadventures yourself, including his face-offs with real public figures.