The movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan released in November 2006 was a critical and commercial success.

The main character in the movie is Sacha Baron Cohen, a British comedian, writer and the host of Da Ali G Show.

As a fictional character, Borat plays a journalist from Kazakhstan who comes to America to make a documentary.

He interviews feminists, politicians, interrupts the weather report on live television, sings about Kazakhstan to the tune of The Star-Spangled Banner on a rodeo, and takes driving lessons to go to California to make Pamela Anderson his wife.

However, portions of the movie depict Kazakhstanians as dressing badly, sharing houses with cows, using women as slaves and giving out tropheys for prostitution.

Alisher Aprymov, a native of Kazakhstan and a freshman in business administration at the University of Tennessee, said a lot of things in the movie have nothing to do with the real Kazakhstan.

"Women are allowed to ride inside the bus, and they have the right to vote," Aprymov said.

Gaby Maldonado, a UT senior in communication studies, said she doesn't think that Kazakh people are like they are portrayed in the movie.

"Hollywood tends to use many stereotypes in their movies just to make it funnier, and doesn't really promote real cultural education," Maldonado said.

Many people in the United States know very little or nothing about Kazakhstan.

It is located in Central Asia and is almost four times the size of Texas with more than 15 million residents.

Kazakhstan was a part of the former Soviet Union that declared its independence in 1991.

Ronald Kalafsky, a UT economic geographer, said he does talk briefly about Kazakhstan in his World Regional Geography class.

"Students don't know much about Kazakhstan. It seems off the map for many of them," Kalafsky said. "I think the U.S. doesn't do a lot of trade with Kazakhstan. A lot of people aren't traveling there on vacation. That's part of the reason."

Lauran San Roman, a UT junior, majoring in journalism and electronic media, said she didn't know anything about Kazakhstan and wasn't sure where it was before meeting a friend from there and the movie.

"I know that the way they are portrayed in the movie aren't at all what the real country is like," San Roman said. "I realized that it was a movie and I knew that a lot of the things portrayed about America were exaggerated, so I assumed that the things about Kasakhstan were exaggerated as well."

Many Kazakh people say they are displeased with the misrepresentations about their country, and hope viewers won't believe everything that's in the movie.

Borat is banned in Kazakhstan and Russia.