4/5 Thanks for the new package but...
  by Kate In A Box (Tennessee)
This show is just great. As is the new Borat movie. But when are we going to get to see his older material? The show was on in the UK long before it came to the US. When are we going to get to watch those DVDs on this side of the pond? He has been doing Borat, Ali G, and Bruno since the mid to late 90s! I want to see more!!!! Release the UK show in the US!! We will get it! Some might not know the British politicians he interviews but heck...most people probably didn't know the American politicians he interviewed on HBO! So it would be worth releasing!!!

5/5 Hilarious!
  by Gary Peterson (San Diego, California USA)
My rather abrupt introduction to comedian Sacha Baron Cohen was in the "Borat" movie. I read an interesting review and went to see it. It was a bit of a shock, to say the least. I was laughing at the opening credits and it just got better and better. Cohen must be a comic genius to create a character simultaneously appealing and appalling and funny, funny, funny. My companion and I were laughing about the movie for weeks thereafter. Then, on Christmas Eve a present of "Da Ali G Show - Da Compleet Seereez" appeared as a present under the tree. We watched it over the next several nights. It was outrageous, offensive, and funny, much along the same line as the "Borat" movie.

Cohen appears as three alter egos: Borat, Bruno and Ali G. In each character he interviews or otherwise reacts with people, some quite prominent, who apparently don't know the situation. Some come off quite well. Some come off as complete fools. Some of the interviews are just embarrassing. How Cohen can get people to step into this kind of situation is a mystery to me but the results can be hilarious and it's fun to see such prominent people set up as a joke. I might add that a lot of people find much of the humor to be juvenile and offensive. Personally, I thought it very funny in that it gets you to laugh at the whole ridiculous human situation and, in the broad sense, you're laughing at yourself. Some people derive deep political meanings out of the humor. I don't. It's just good fun. Relax and have a good laugh.

A comparison between the "Borat" movie and "Da Ali G Show" seems to be in order. Well, I liked the "Borat" movie best. First of all, Borat (the character) is the most engaging of the three Cohen characters. Second, the movie has more of a story to it rather than being a series of unrelated vignettes. But, take you choice. Both are first-rate entertainment from a comic genious. Hilarious!

Gary Peterson

5/5 Respect for Da Compleet Seereez
  by Brian Inerfeld (Beverly Hills, CA United States)
Big ups for Sacha Baron Cohen's overwhelming success. Unfortunately, it bookends his brilliant series Da Ali G Show on HBO.

The show is fantastic, and having Da Compleet Seereez in one set is phenomenal, and addictive.

Buy this. Watch it one thousand times, then track down the original English series on vhs.

Regardless of your politics or point of view, you'll find something redeeming and genuine in Ali G, Borat and Bruno.

This is a must have in the comedy collection. Truly groundbreaking work.

5/5 One of the most fascinating comedians of our age
  by Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA)
I had a great political science professor as an undergraduate, Jim Ranchino, a student of William Appleman Williams. Nothing angered Ranchino so much as lightly examined or passively accepted ideas. His goal as a professor, he said, was to raise our "B.S. quotient." To this end, he would try to make us challenge him. On occasion he would do his best to make his students challenge him, to force us to refuse to accept him as an authority, even intentionally lying for the entire class period, making up increasingly outrageous "facts" about, say, the war in the Pacific in WW II or the beliefs of some political philosopher. His goal was not to get us to ingest a certain body of "facts," but to get us to question, to challenge, and confront.

I think Jim Ranchino would have appreciated Sascha Baron Cohen's humor. His three alter egos - Ali G., Borat, and Brûno - are among the most challenging comic characters to have appeared in the past couple of decades. They are challenging both because Cohen uses them to challenge and satirize our almost limitless gullibility. Ali G. is a brilliant caricature of wannabes, people who are so fake that they themselves are unaware of it. We don't know what Ali G.'s real name is, but we know that he is a white, upper-class twit. He talks of "Keeping it real," yet he is so self-deceived that he can confront his viewers by asking, "Haven't you ever seen a black man before?" So on one level we laugh at Ali G. because he is a self-deceived idiot, but on another we laugh at the people who are taken in by his fraud. And since many of the people Ali G. deceives are people that we look up to in our culture, the joke is on us as well. Cohen's strategy is perhaps best seen in a skit where Brûno interviews a man in charge of a fashion show and asks him a string of questions that directly contradict one another, such as "Why was everything so light?" follows by "Why was everything so heavy?" His final question in the interview is, "Is consistency important to you?"

Of course, this constant puncturing of the pretensions of our culture would be merely an intellectual exercise if the series wasn't also hysterically funny. There are times in DA ALI G. SHOW when I laugh about as hard as it is possible for me to laugh. There are also times when I merely winch. Cohen is almost always on the edge in his humor, which how he likes it. Much of the time when I watch him, I'm extremely uncomfortable; the rest of the time I'm laughing my head off. In one scene I might be dying as Ali G. asks Buzz Aldrin, "Will man ever set foot on the sun?" (After Aldrin assures him that we will not, ever, because it is too hot, Ali G. asks, "What if we were to go during the winter?") In another I might feel uneasy compassion for some poor soul as Borat shows pornographic Polaroids of him and his sister. Sometimes his skits show us at our worse, such as the glee with which patrons in a country western bar join Borat in singing "Throw the Jew Down the Well." Are we, we wonder, really that racist beneath the surface? Or are the people in the bar oblivious as to the meaning of the lyrics?

Cohen has a longstanding interest in prejudice and hatred of otherness. At Cambridge University his studies were centered on the American civil rights movement in the sixties (I've wondered if his frequent visits to Mississippi on his shows are related to his academic background). I'm not saying that everything on Cohen's shows has an elevated purpose or is high-minded, but I do believe that it is part of the mix. Obviously he is first and foremost an entertainer more than willing to take the low road for a laugh, but it is also obvious that his questions often have other purposes.


5/5 I think I busted a gut hahaha
  by Jason D. Conte (San Jose, CA)
This DVD was a gift for my dad.... then it was so funny I had to borrow it for myself :P His characters are each funny in their own way, but the funniest stuff comes from how people react to his characters. In one interview, Bruno is asking a fashion designer questions, but they are all conflicting!!! First he says "I thought your collection seemed heavy, do you agree?" and the guy he interviewing agrees and explains that he wanted that, then Bruno says "You know I thought you collection felt very light, and i felt like I was floating, do you agree?" and AGAIN the guy aghrees and explains it. Absolutely priceless!