Maybe I should see this film . . .

Jacob Sullum has a belly laugh at Borat:

Because I live in the U.S. rather than Russia, last night I had the opportunity to see Borat, which I highly recommend. In addition to making me laugh so hard I couldn't breathe (the look on former Georgia congressman Bob Barr's face during his brief encounter with Sacha Baron Cohen's Kazakh alter ego is by itself worth the price of admission), it made me sympathize a bit (a teeny-weeny bit) with the Anti-Defamation League's concern that people confronted by the outrageous anti-Semitism of Borat and his compatriots might not get the joke.

[. . .]

What the ADL misses, I think, is that part of Cohen's talent is to amuse and discomfit his audience at the same time. Sometimes you laugh because you're so uncomfortable. I still have reservations about his mistreatment of perfectly nice people whose patience he tests with Borat's boorish and disgusting behavior, but it produces some undeniably hilarious moments. Many of his targets, who include mysoginists, homophobes, anti-Semites, and anti-Muslim bigots, deserve to be goaded and mocked, and their comments tend to make you uncomfortable in a different way.