The Guardian: Five stars

Peter Bradshaw writes: "Borat is the hero of this extraordinary mocu-reality adventure: a film so funny, so breathtakingly offensive, so suicidally discourteous, that strictly speaking it shouldn't be legal at all."

The Daily Mail

Baz Bamigboye writes: "Sacha Baron Cohen and his director Larry Charles shot over 400 hours of footage for their film Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan and then spent months finely editing it to just under two hours. It boils down to the funniest 120 minutes to hit the big screen this year. The movie's going to offend just about every living soul on the planet. No one escapes Borat's razor-sharp wit."

The Telegraph

Sukhdev Sandhu writes: "Perhaps you'll laugh at the subtitle: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Perhaps you'll laugh at the opening credits: a grab-bag of public-information-film graphics and sputtering newsreels from an inept cable-network show. The only guarantee for anyone who sees Borat is that once you start laughing, it will be impossible to stop. Kids who can't recite a line of poetry will be reeling off the entire script within days. ...

"Seeing a Barbie doll at a yard sale of a woman whom he's convinced is a gipsy, Borat demands: 'Who is this lady you have shrunk?' Seeing a couple of cockroaches on the floor of a Jewish-run guesthouse, he shrieks: 'Look! The Jews have shifted their shapes!'"

The Times: Three stars out of five

Larry Charles's big-screen account of Borat's cockeyed adventures is a squirming joy and a film to cherish.  It begins in a muddy village in Kazakhstan. This, explains Borat, is home. He is a cool and confident narrator. He introduces neighbours and hugs the local rapists, criminals and psychopaths. There is a cow in his state-of-the-art living room. This is rural bliss. Women are inherently stupid; incest is normal; bestiality is best. It’s a civic duty to butcher gypsies and Jews. It’s good, clean, normal fun.

Some U.S. reviews are available at rottentomatoes.com.

Twentieth Century Fox has cut down the number of theatres in which Borat will open from 2,000 down to 800. This is apparently not very precedented.