Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020)

Director: Jason Woliner

Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Maria Bakalova, Dani Popescu, Tom Hanks (no, really)

Have I Seen it Before: Ah, yes, the pleasure of taking in a new movie in 2020. The movie business is hurting. Movie theaters are hurting more. Maybe there will be a new day soon when we can all be sort of annoyed by the one-two punch of being sold premium theater chain memberships and softball trivia questions. But for now, I’m glad some studios are understanding that streaming options are a good way to start digging their way out of an unfortunate hole. 

But that’s not what this review is about.

Did I Like It: The element that keeps the original Borat (2006) still fresh, after the individual jokes have lost their shock value, is Cohen’s perhaps insane commitment to the bit at hand. His fearlessness cannot be duplicated, just as his catchphrases rendered his most famous character fairly neuter.

And it is clever the way we get the Kazakh journalist back, with him realizing that he has become too well-known for his previous style of antics. The man who hides behind his characters now hides behind new disguises, and we’re off to the races.

But it isn’t as fearless as it once was. There isn’t the preposterous high of Borat (Cohen) wrestling naked with Azamat Bagatov. He’s older now, and tamer, while the kind of people he is imitating and the kind of people he exposes have metastasized everywhere. The film is funny enough, and timelier than I would have expected, but I do wonder if there will be anything to see here within a couple of years.

The one thing I am struck by, and I keep coming back to in the days since viewing the film, is how life-affirming it turned out to be.

I know. I was surprised as well.

Borat himself softens a bit within a certain limitation, growing to accept his daughter (Bakalova, getting to do the kind of stealth prank work that Cohen might be too high-profile for anymore) and fitfully move his country out of their medieval views, but he is hardly a saint after the credits kick in. The real unlikely hero of this unlikely sequel is Holocaust survivor Judith Dim Evans. So many people Borat has met over the years fall to the occasion of being the worst possible example of a human being. As Borat enters her synagogue dressed as Borat’s idea of a Jew, she has absolutely earned the right to meet his nonsense with anger. Instead, she talks to Borat and meets him with love. Even Cohen can’t keep the act up against this towering pillar of humanity. It’s heartbreaking to learn she has passed away since filming her scenes for the film.

Oh, yeah. The Giuliani sequence? Far more horrifying than the news is letting you believe, and not improved at all by the fact that America’s Mayor may not know how old Tutar is supposed to be.

Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan (2006)*

Director: Larry Charles

Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Ken Davitian, Luenell, Pamela Anderson

Have I Seen it Before: Did anyone not see it in 2006?

Did I Like It: I mean, seriously? If you had any interest in watching this film, you’ve already seen it. If you actually understood it, you probably got a little sick of “my wife” pretty quickly. Plenty of people saw Borat as some kind of hero for their own dimly considered political incorrectness. It never seems to occur to these kinds of people that the butt of the joke is the American mindset in the first few years (at this point, it’s shaping up to be the first quarter) of the twenty-first century. These people didn’t watch the character duirng his early days on Da Ali G Show. I did. I got it. I think.

I was laughing so hard when I first saw this in the theater, that I honestly thought I’d pass out. Cohen is so profoundly committed to taking his various pranks through to their most absurd and uncomfortable ends, one initially laughs at a new situation, before wincing that no human should try these things, before howling with laughter once again that he is indeed taking it far past your wildest fears. Then, those aforementioned people came around and quoted it to death and ruined it for the rest of us. Same damn thing happened with Anchorman. This is why we can’t have nice things.

Ten-plus years later, the potency of some of the laughs may have subsided, but the audacity will never diminish. One marvels at the naked fight Borat (Cohen) and Bagatov (Davitian) have in the hotel. That one might have some kind of qualm about doing the things they do for a laugh. And just at the moment you think this is a certainly a committed performance in a controlled environment, civilians are brought into the process. Maybe they are hired extra and more of this is an illusion than it looks like at first blush, but they want us to believe in the moment that this is really happening, and it takes nearly fifteen years and enough distance to think that maybe it wasn’t.

I may be a little fearful as to what Cohen may have in store for us in the forthcoming sequel. If the audacity isn’t back during the second helping, then it will be a sad exercise, indeed. If the surprise of the laughter returns, then it may just be exactly what 2020 needs. And maybe everyone else won’t ruin it in the process.

*I’m a little distressed that I didn’t have to look up the full title of the movie.