You can’t ever accuse Sacha Baron Cohen of not being ambitious enough.
The prankster-in-chief returns as Borat Sagdiyev and rather than feeling like he was dragging out a cultural sensation from yesteryear, the Borat sequel feels oddly fresh and urgent – and sets his sights on some high-profile targets including a lecherous Rudy Giuliani.
With 10 days to go until the US election, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is often hilarious, frequently stupefying and surprisingly tender.
That last word is not something you would usually associate with Baron Cohen’s crass characters, but perhaps after two decades of making fools of people (and not everyone deserved it), he’s developed a softer side in his own work.
In Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, after years in the gulag as punishment for humiliating Kazakhstan on the world stage, Borat is given a new mission by the government.
Wishing to cosy up to Donald Trump like other authoritarian figures, Borat is to return to America with a gift for Mike Pence. When the original present is foiled, he decides to offer his stowaway 15-year-old daughter Tutar, who for her part is excited to be imprisoned in her own golden cage just like “Princess Melania”.
Tutar is a dazzling addition to the dynamic and it also lets Baron Cohen pull of some stunts that he couldn’t do himself, including a truly jawdropping dance at a debutante ball.
Actress Maria Bakalova, 24, is having an absolute ball and the movie seems genuinely interested in exploring the limitations and expectations placed on women through this satirical character who supposedly comes from a society in which daughters are classified as livestock and told that “vagines have teeth”.
What Borat Subsequent Moviefilm reinforces is that even in so-called progressive democracies such as the United States, women are still treated as less than men.
By introducing Tutar, it also elevates the film in that there is an emotional story arc that means there is genuine character growth for Borat and his kid. Much like the recent Bill & Ted sequel, this generational baton-passing hits all the right spots. The last thing you expected to find in the Borat sequel was heart.
So rather than just watching Americans be idiots (and honestly, that’s just on the nightly news), there’s a compelling narrative to follow.
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Much has changed since 2006 when Baron Cohen’s racist and misogynistic character revealed Americans’ hidden prejudices in a whirlwind and riotous tour around the country. But how do you repeat such a thing when Borat is so recognisable but also given that so many Americans have no problems wearing those prejudices on their sleeves?
Baron Cohen has no problems convincing a bunch of AR-15-toting “March for our Rights” protesters to sing along to lyrics “chop them up like the Saudis do” and “inject them with the Wuhan flu” – the “them” being journalists, Fauci, WHO and Obama. You don’t even want to know what the crowd thinks they should do with scientists.
It would be all the more revolting if it wasn’t so completely unsurprising. As it is, it’s another despairing reminder that Nazi salutes are commonplace in some quarters of the US.
From crashing Pence’s speech at a conservative conference to advice from sugar babies on how to appear weak, it’s a horror show.
Of course, the piece de resistance is that gotcha Giuliani scene.
Much has been made about his hands-in-pants behaviour in the bedroom (which has been emphasised with menacing score and lighting design) but perhaps the more disgusting aspect of that sequence is the everyday sexism and lasciviousness on display during the interview.
Behaviour like Giuliani’s shouldn’t amaze us at this point but the fact that it still does means maybe there’s hope yet. Certainly, that’s what Baron Cohen is banking on. Very nice.
Rating: 3.5/5
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm premieres on Amazon Prime Video from Friday, October 23.
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2020-10-22 20:14:28Z
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