Borat: Cultural learnings of America for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan

I swear, the grammar checker found no problems with that sentence whatsoever.

If Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat character wasn’t a cultural icon after his wildly successful ‘Da Ali G Show’, he will be after this hysterical mockumentary. Only the bleakest killjoy won’t laugh at the gross political incorrectness, subtly crafted wordplay, slapstick comedy, cringe-inducing nudity, low and high brow humour or the anti-sematic, anti-feminist or anti-gay overtones of the film.

The film centres on Borat travelling across America, picking up the nuances of American culture. On the journey, you'll see countless scenes that will make you squirm and a handful of others that will burn unthinkable images onto your brain like a branding iron. All the while you and everyone around you will be in hysterics, trying not to fall on the floor, and in split minds as to whether you should be looking at the screen or not.

The whole film feels like a low budget, 16mm production. As you’d expect from a mockumentary, it’s shot using a mixture of handheld and locked-off tripod shots. There are no special effects in sight; the cheap road map animations and teletext-style title overlays (which all add to the absurdist humour) are the closest the film gets to computer generated images.

The humour isn’t just brilliant; it’s of lawsuit inducing calibre. Many of the interviewees didn’t realise they were being had, and have since tried to sue for defamation. Since the dialogue is unscripted, seeing their own reactions on the big screen gives them the hindsight to be rightfully ashamed of themselves. This is really the underpinning premise of the film.

Throughout the relentless bulldozing of politically correct boundaries, blatant disregard for any and all notions of good taste and hysterically awkward situations, you see a pattern and purpose emerge. And contrary to the title of the film, it’s not lessons the third world can take from the United States.

The purpose is in the lessons about tolerance and prejudice Americans can take from themselves. Borat is a character constructed to be so horrifically offensive that anybody who talks to him feels comfortable revealing the intolerance and bigotry that they would normally go to great lengths to hide.

This conversational contrast is the genius of Sacha Baron Cohen. Instead of pushing people into a corner, he makes his interviewees’ own corners suddenly appear so appealing that they reveal the uncomfortable truth about themselves during skewed conversation. It’s the radicalism of Borat that exploits the human desire to tolerate, empathise and share viewpoints. And it’s hysterically confronting.

You will leave the theatre wondering what was more disturbing: the outlandishly tasteless -- yet scripted -- Borat character; or the slightly bewildered -- but very genuine -- cheers of the rodeo crowd, after Borat announces over the PA system “May George Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq!”