Borat Subsequent Moviefilm -- a Review by Guy S. Malone, Researcher
For the uninitiated, roughly half of the Borat Subsequent Moviefilm 95-minute runtime is cringeworthy, and about a quarter of that is jaw-dropping. In case you are wondering, those fractions comprise about half of the cringe and shock values of Sacha Baron Cohen's 2006 original--Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Have Cohen and his alter ego, Borat Sagdiyev, lost their touch? Gone soft? We would say no; rather, America, the subject of his satirical skewering, has changed over the past 15 years. As a result, about one-third of the US will think the film is right on and hilarious, one-third will think it's not funny at all and exaggerated, and one-third will look into the mirror Cohen holds up and shake its collective head.
Borat, a reporter from Kazakhstan, is universally reviled in his country as a result of his first documentary. We reunite with him at the work camp where he is doing hard labor. He is given another chance, though, when he is sent on a special mission: to give President "McDonald" Trump a gift. Since Trump befriends ruthless political strongmen in other countries, why not Kazakhstan.
As a result of his incarceration, Borat finds he has lost everything except "my livestock: two pig, one cow, and a daughter," Tutar (Maria Bakalova), who lives in the stockyard because, at 15-years old, she hasn’t gotten married and put in her "wife cage." Tutar dreams of coming to America, in hopes of becoming "the next Melania; she is the happiest wife in the world.” Borat refuses to take her, but she stows away in his luggage, and when he discovers her he hatches a scheme to offer Tutar to Vice President Mike Pence as a gift.
After landing in Galveston, they travel across the American South, each stop further preparing Tutar for her role in the plot. (There is a diversion, though, a stop at a bakery that ends in a women's health clinic, that provides a bizarre series of misunderstandings and one of the highlights of the film.) Throughout, real-life people are either embarrassed by Borat and Tutar, or they embarrass themselves as father and daughter seek self-improvements ranging from cosmetic to class--should Tutar be a debutante or a sugar baby--or both? Cohen dons various disguises, ranging from Trump to a country singer, in an effort to push the farce or the satire. We meet Mike Pence, Rudy Giuliani, and a pair of QAnon believers who sincerely extend hospitality and a helping hand to Borat.
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm runs into the same difficulties that Saturday Night Live faces these days: how to satirize a reality that is already ridiculous. In addition, over the past four years, the targets of Cohen's lampooning--misogynists, racists, and religious hypocrites--are more out in the open and less embarrassed about those defining traits. Cohen's barbs remain sharp as ever, though, and his director Jason Woliner (taking over for Larry Charles), does yeoman work in pulling it off and together. The revelation here is Balakova as Tutar. She is as sympathetic as she is zany, and elevates every scene in which she appears.
7.5 out of 10
