“It owes the canon nothing.”
The movie pursues immediacy and audience pleasure without begging institutions to certify its worth.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Comedy · 2006
Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev travels to America to make a documentary. As he zigzags across the nation, Borat meets real people in real situations with hysterical consequences. His backwards behavior generates strong reactions around him exposing prejudices and hypocrisies in American culture.
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
“Come to Kazakhstan, it's nice!”
Critical arithmetic
The consensus, allegedly.
Scores change. Arguments endure.
IMDb
7.4 / 10
472.9K votes
Rotten Tomatoes
90 %
Tomatometer
Metacritic
89 / 100
Metascore
TMDB
6.8 / 10
Community rating
External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.
Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev travels to America to make a documentary. As he zigzags across the nation, Borat meets real people in real situations with hysterical consequences. His backwards behavior generates strong reactions around him exposing prejudices and hypocrisies in American culture.
What this film says about your taste.
Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.
The archetype split
Who fights over Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan?
The Popcorn Loyalist
“Big screen, big feelings, no apologies.”
Read their caseThe Arthouse Gremlin
“The stranger, the better.”
Read their objectionThe split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.
Nearby on the taste map.
TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.
Watch in your region.
Cinema release signals and current streaming, rental, and purchase options for your region.
Streaming availability data supplied by JustWatch.
The people responsible.
Cast & crew
Directed by
Larry Charles
Written by
Sacha Baron Cohen · Dan Mazer · Anthony Hines · Peter Baynham
Put Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan on trial.
Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.
“Easy pleasure, short half-life.”
It moves efficiently through the moment but offers little reason to keep arguing once the credits end.




