Film Review: BORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM (2020): Iconic Sacha Baron Cohen Character Returns to Lambast America in a Non-Revelatory but Still Necessary Way

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm Review

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020) Film Review, a movie directed by Jason Woliner, and starring Sacha Baron Cohen, Maria Bakalova, Dani Popescu, Jeanise Jones, Judith Dim Evans, Macy Chanel, Mike Pence, Rudy Giuliani, and Tom Hanks.

2006 feels like ancient history, doesn’t it?

Back then America was in the throes of the Iraq War, rampant Islamophobia was sustaining the boogeyman hunt that is the War on Terror, and the liberal-conservative culture war was fomenting to an evangelical head. Not that we’ve really forgotten about those things – though some of us have definitely tried to – yet in the unrestrained face of far-right extremism that’s taken over the country (and much of the globe) in the past few years, coupled with the chaos that’s been the coronavirus pandemic of the past nine months, those defining moments can feel like a distant memory … particularly those mid-aught mindsets of “politeness” and “tolerance” that did the work of legitimizing such terrible states.

Because everyone was unhealthily obsessed with manners in such a chaotic time, it opened up a narrative niche for provocateurs to exploit. It was like adapting Candid Camera for a new generation, one where televised war images and presidential sex scandals were becoming the norm and the lines between entertainment and reality were blurring at a rapid rate. The cultural envelope needed a little push.

Enter Sacha Baron Cohen: a British entertainer with chameleonic prowess (despite his towering 6-foot-3 stature) and fearless, unmitigated gumption. This combo has allowed him to infiltrate the populace undetected, but he didn’t do so just to pull off a jump scare or a silly sidewalk prank. Rather, his own caricatures acted as a double-edged cultural sword: they made the “polite” people uncomfortable in ways that made them laugh, but by doing so exposed the irony that was their own intolerance.

Thus, in 2006, Borat took the world by storm. Developed as a spin-off of a Da Ali G Show persona, Baron Cohen used his fictional Kazakh reporter to highlight American excess and jingoism within Bush’s America. It became a cultural flash bomb that grossed over 10 times its budget, garnered an Oscar nomination, and has forever lodged such oddities as Groucho Marx-esque moustaches and overly-eager exclamations of marital identity – ironically and unironically – into the craw of popular discourse (as evidenced by the “Stupid Foreign Reporter” costume that Borat finds at a Halloween shop in this sequel, to which the cashier unawarely opines that it “looks just like you”). Baron Cohen was a new comedic force to be reckoned with.

However, regardless of the lasting iconography of Borat the character, Borat the film was very much of the moment. It was in the pre-social media era, where immediate mass communication as we now know it was slightly out of reach. It was a time before conspiracy theories could spread with such virality, and before the mentality of the imageboard became the unfortunate norm. That’s not to suggest crass realities like America’s notion of exceptionalism, as well as its blatant racism and xenophobia, no longer exists in 2020, nor that well-meaning liberal classes’ obsessions with civility has stopped. Rather, it’s just evident that 2006 was a time before the latter was forced to do some introspection and confronting empire’s rotten core became a daily occurrence.

Baron Cohen’s very style, once bold and unique, has since been disseminated beyond the confines of cinema, and no longer strikes with that sting of inimitable audacity (either through structured forms such as the brilliant The Eric Andre Show, or the ubiquitous development of mobile technology and the vast unpredictability of the Internet). Essentially, it’s become a bit old-hat, and that’s what makes the existence of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm a bit odd. Unlike the first one it’s not new, but just like the first one it’s not timeless, either. It takes us a moment to parse this sequel’s importance beyond a quick attention grab.

For reference, it’s set 14 years after the events of the first. Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen) has been sent to a prison labor camp for tarnishing Kazakhstan’s international reputation after his reporting in the first film. However, he is offered a chance at career redemption when his Premier (Dani Popescu) tells him to deliver a peace offering to U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, as a way to curry favor for Kazakhstan amongst the world’s political elites. But through a mix-up Borat’s teenage daughter Tutar (played brilliantly by Maria Bakalova, who holds her own ground against Baron Cohen’s shtick with unshakable conviction) is sent with him instead. Borat, wanting to get Tutar off his back, sees this as an opportunity to present her as the peace offering, and commences a trip throughout the U.S. to prime her into being a cultured American woman.

Overall, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm feels sort of like Hollywood’s version of the liberal call to “return to normal” – “normal” being that pre-2016 time when structural racism, violent foreign policy, and a widening class divide could be glazed over via watered-down identity politics and the then-party-in-power’s crippling addiction to decency. It’s like Baron Cohen and newcomer director Woliner are trying to return to an earlier era of cinematic chutzpah, while also trying to reveal just how far the populace’s latent hatreds have unwound. But for anyone who’s been online for the past few years – be it the dredges of political Twitter or even coping with the brain-fried QAnon postings from your red-pilled family members on Facebook – that revelatory sense the filmmakers are aiming for is lost on us. To take a phrase from Black Twitter, the oft-uncited source for much of the Internet’s prime content: we been knew.

However, just because Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’s shtick is not new anymore does not mean that it doesn’t serve a purpose – however (in)significant that purpose may be.

Liberal and moderate pundits have spent the last five years decrying the immorality of elected officials, hoping they’ll somehow learn their lesson and return to that aforementioned “normalcy”. Baron Cohen doesn’t have such lofty goals. In fact, he’s doing the grunt work of simply keeping America’s cultural failings prevalent in our minds. He’s not trying to rehabilitate these people nor offer a cure for Western culture; rather, he’s just showing these problems plain-faced and allowing us to formulate our own courses of action … if we so choose. The point of a Borat sequel 14 years later is not an affirmative call to arms so much as it is a reminder to not succumb to complacency.

Also, just because it’s not timeless does not mean that it’s not timely. Whereas Borat really focused on American xenophobia in the wake of the War on Terror, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm refocuses on the blatant sexism of Trump’s political structure – and, by extension, the latent misogyny sewn into the fabric of America on the whole.

Borat’s initial disrespect towards his daughter Tutar forces us as viewers to ask why we look down on sexism from other places yet allow it to permeate American life unabated. He tells the flabbergasted babysitter (Jeanise Jones, who handles her role with venerated tact) the ‘strings’ in Tutar’s brain will snap if she tries to comprehend complex ideas. We watch that and think how shocking that is to hear … but how different is that from Macy Chanel telling Tutar earlier that men like weak and vulnerable women? Or the fathers at the debutante ball drunkenly flirting about the teenage girls while suggesting their ‘buying’ prices? Or the plastic surgeon saying he wants to sleep with Tutar right in front of her supposed father?

Again, this is the double-edged sword of Baron Cohen’s comedy that exposes Americans’ cognitive dissonance. It shows Americans disgusted at other peoples’ sexist ideologies – which allows us, the viewers, to laugh at their disgust – but it also reveals that their own ideologies have a shared, sleazy core – which should force us, the viewers once again, to question why we tolerate such behaviors amongst our fellow citizens. In a way, it also ties back to the original film’s focus on America’s xenophobia (after all, the central conceit of Borat is the focus on the other as a key to cultural analysis) and in turn reminds us of its interconnectedness to misogyny and all other forms of oppression.

Subsequent Moviefilm’s inclusion of Tutar also allows us distance from Borat himself, and in those moments, it stokes some genuine warmth. Not counting the obviously staged moments (particularly all the Kazakhstan sequences and others that comprise the central plot, as well as that Alexa scene – which feels too on-the-nose in a Prime Video film to be anything but product placement), any skeptical viewer will undoubtedly wonder how much staging went into all of these “candid” moments. However, the performers pull off their character development so well that we can’t help but hope that it was all improvised on the fly. Jones catalyzes a lot of the emotional development in these moments (the pre-plastic surgery car scene between her and Tutar is very, very good) and she deserves all the compensation in the world for doing so, as well as those women at the synagogue who handle their scene with much aplomb.

Like his first iteration, Borat is very much of his time. His and Tutar’s turns in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm may not be timeless (and based on what he’s revealing about our culture on the whole, let’s hope it’s not), but it serves its purpose in a satisfying and ridiculous manner. And hey – in terms of Being Mad About Current Events, watching this won’t melt your brain as quickly as doomscrolling through Twitter will. You can take my personal word on that front.

Rating: 6/10

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