Product Details

• Actors: Sacha Baron Cohen
• Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, Subtitled, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0)
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 4
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: HBO Home Video
• DVD Release Date: November 21, 2006
• Run Time: 360 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000JBXH82
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #27,520 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
  • #10 in Movies & TV > DVD > TV Talk Shows
• Learn more about "Da Ali G Show - Da Compleet Seereez" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

This November 3rd everyone will be talking about the movie "Borat." This hilarious film (released by Fox), takes us on an adventure with the controversial Khazakhstani reporter as he travels America in search of love. Borat, born from HBO's Da Ali G Show, is a great opportunity for Da Ali G Show on DVD. Don't let your customers miss out on the opportunity to sell this DVD. We are introducing this Collector's Edition DVD which contains the complete series of HBO?s Da Ali G Show, all 12 episodes in a "blinged out" special edition box.

DVD Features:
3D Animated Menus
Additional Scenes
Audio Commentary

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 65 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Thanks for the new package but... November 21, 2006

By Kate In A Box

Format:DVD

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!!!

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious! January 3, 2007

By Gary Peterson TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:DVD

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 Read more ›

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Respect for Da Compleet Seereez December 17, 2006

By philobeddoe

Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase

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 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most fascinating comedians of our age July 20, 2009

By Robert Moore HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

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 Brűno - 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 Brűno 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. Read more ›

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Still Brilliant Almost 10 Years Later July 25, 2012

By Sky TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

After seeing the individual releases of the first and second seasons of Da Ali G Show on sale here at Amazon for a total of about 17 bucks, I immediately added them to my cart. So think about comparing the price of the individual first and second season releases to this combo pack before you buy. The DVDs arrived earlier this week, my older son and I watched all 12 episodes in two nights, and we laughed out loud like it was the first time we ever saw the show. Well, actually it was the first time my son saw the show, and he got his first lessons in Socratic Irony.

The Ali G character is funny, and remember it is this series that also introduced the Borat and Brüno characters to the US as well. Sacha Baron Cohen takes his characters, puts them in interview mode with unassuming real people--often famous people--that believe they are actually participating in some kind of talk show. And the result is usually hilarity. The funniest part being the reaction to each character by the people that he is duping. Cohen's Ali G character (a stereotypical hip-hop, British ghetto banger TV host), Borat (a Kazakhstani reporter naive to US culture), and Brüno (a stereotypical gay mannerismed TV host) have the same modus operandi....And that modus operandi is Socratic Irony; Cohen's characters deliberately feign ignorance in order to expose weakness in the commitment that people have to being so politically correct that they almost always seriously (attempt to) answer the ridiculous opinions and questions that Cohen's characters come up with. Hence, his victims look equally stupid....

The only victim that I ever saw that had enough intelligence to quickly walk out of the situation without any regard to whether or not he was offending a Cohen character (Ali G) was Donald Trump.

Even if you were a fan of this show almost 10 years ago now, trust me when I say that if the last time you saw the show (like me) was when it was on HBO, you will enjoy watching these episodes again today just as if it were the first time you were seeing them.

If you've never seen this show: Check. It. Out. But don't be fooled into being offended by any of the Cohen characters. They are not real; the man behind the mask really isn't that stupid. He's trying to make YOU look stupid. And if you take Cohen's characters seriously, you will indeed look stupid. You see? Socratic Irony.

Booyahkasha! Read more ›