borat is everything you could possibly imagine. or fear. or hope for.

so, a man pretending to be a television journalist from a former soviet republic goes to america and has fun at the expense of some of its people. much of the fun is in the service of exposing bigotry. it includes an old boy rodeo-type advocating the execution of gay people, a grotesque spoof sport called 'the running of the jew', and one of the fattest and hairiest men in the world wrestling naked with another man in the service of defending pamela anderson's honour.

yep, there are a couple of moments where i thought sacha baron cohen was using 'borat' to take advantage of vulnerable people, but it's unclear just how much the participants did or did not know about the film, so this is a difficult one to judge. the fact that there is a film out there which will attract an enormous number of people who may not normally engage that much with the politics of prejudice in a journey of such twisted hilarity i almost don't believe some of my memories of what is actually in it...well, surely this has to be welcomed.