Borat

Aroview: A savage, often side-splitting, satire from balls-of-steel British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, who moves a minor character from his "Ali G Show" centre stage, strikes a cultural nerve, and scores a box-office phenomenon.

Posing as Borat, a Kazakhstani TV reporter making a documentary across America, his painfully ignorant persona is the perfect ruse to expose an unseamly side of American hearts and minds. Essentially a series of stunts, most of which are wincingly funny, the 'ordinary citizens' he meets might be on the butt of a cruel joke, but the point is a sobering one about the state of the nation, and the wider world.

Audacious to an ethically dubious degree, though, it was perhaps unsurprising that some indignant 'castmembers' sent the lawsuits flying.

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