The Minutemen, those self-anointed guardians of American sovereignty, were watching the wrong border.īorat, who just recently invited the “mighty warlord” George W.
Many months later, the funny bruised fruits of his labor, “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” are poised to hit the collective American conscience with a juicy splat. Even if it means no more Borat, ever.Sometime in early 2005, a mustachioed Kazakh journalist known as Borat Sagdiyev slipped into America with the intention of making a documentary for the alleged good of his Central Asian nation. History is arguably at a crucial point here’s hoping any Americans on the fence who see this over the next two weeks get the message that the threat to democracy isn’t worth another four years of Trump jokes. We’ve seen these sorts of antics from him many times before.īefore the credits roll, Baron Cohen ends with a simple message of “Now Vote … or You Will Be Execute” as Borat would say in his broken English. Getting attendees to a “March for Our Rights” wearing QAnon shirts to cheer for whether journalists should be either “injected with the Wuhan flu” or “chopping them up like the Saudis do” doesn’t have quite the same impact as when Baron Cohen got a country bar to sing along to “Throw the Jew Down the Well” in 2004. She is responsible for some of the bigger gotchas in the film, reducing Borat to a bit player at times, allowing Baron Cohen to develop new characters on the spot such as “John Chevrolet.” (Some appear to have been recycled from his less-than-gangbusters “Who Is America?” series.)Īgain, there’s no shortage of attempts to shock, albeit with diminishing returns if this isn’t your first subjection to Borat. She doesn’t quite steal the show, but relatively unknown Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova shines brighter than her platinum dye job as Borat’s daughter, Tutar. Baron Cohen and director Jason Woliner overload to the point of weighing down “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” with uncomfortable high-fives to I-can’t-believe-they-just-said-that-on-camera comments and cringeworthy confessions, such as when a plastic surgeon says he’d “make sexy time” with Borat’s 15-year-old daughter if her faux father wasn’t in the room. There are no extended guffaws here, like the naked hotel fight from Borat’s first feature-length effort. That’s all I’m going to say about inappropriate touching, but that comes with the territory when dealing with Baron Cohen’s crass brand of humour. The father then loses the girl as she asserts her independence by declaring women can drive motor vehicles, only to win the daughter’s love back at the end by saving her from Rudy Giuliani. 23 (that includes Canada, and the film features a throwaway dig at Justin Trudeau that legitimately made me spit out my Tim Hortons coffee), as more than just a sequel, but rather a touching daddy-daughter road trip movie where a father realizes he has a long-lost child (stowed away in place of a monkey - don’t ask). I got the impression Baron Cohen would want fans of Borat to think of his new effort, launching on Amazon Prime Video on Oct. If you are unfamiliar with his outrageous exploits from “Da Ali G Show” on HBO or the original 2006 mockumentary comedy that bears his fictitious name, you may be living under a rock heavier than the ones apparently cutting off oxygen to the brains of Baron Cohen’s latest unsuspecting victims in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.”īorat’s primary journalistic skill has always been to get interviewees to reveal their racism, sexism and any other -isms that may come out through his own politically incorrect façade, making for what are often awkwardly forced chuckles from voyeurs watching at home. Bob Hope entertained troops for 50 years, right up through the Gulf War of the early ’90s.Īnd ever since he first hit British telly 20 years ago, there has been Sacha Baron Cohen in the guise of “Stupid Foreign Reporter” Borat Sagdiyev. Peter Sellers taught Americans in the Cold War to stop worrying and love the bomb as Dr. During the Great Depression and the Second World War, it was the Three Stooges. Whenever times have seemed their bleakest, thankfully there have always been people trying to make us laugh despite the circumstances.