BORAT: SUBSEQUENT MOVIE FILM | FILM REVIEW
Dir: Jason Woliner (18, 95 mins)
Sacha Baron Cohen brings his Kazakhstan TV journalist out of retirement for this scathing, scabrously funny and angrily urgent film, presciently timed for the US election. Cohen’s first big screen outing as the character trolled unsuspecting racists and misogynists, and proved that the actor has very large cojones. This goes even further and adds another character into the mix: Borat’s daughter Tutar, played with the same amount of fearlessness by Maria Baklova.
Tasked with presenting a gift to vice president Mike Pence to get Kazakhstan back on the political map after shaming his country with his previous movie film, Borat returns to America with his gift of Johnny The Ape, only to find that his daughter has stowed away and the ape has, well, been eaten. Seeing the examples set by Trump, Borat surmises that his 15-year-old daughter will be an adequate replacement and sets about refining her for Pence. Cringeworthy, hands-over-the-eyes moments of awkwardness ensue as Tutar gets a makeover, considers plastic surgery, has a run-in with an abortion clinic and makes an unforgettable appearance at a debutante ball.
That the pair of them survived the filming is a miracle of its own. Cohen deals urgently with the pandemic and the mishandling and misinformation around it, Borat ending up self-isolating with two Trump-supporting conspiracy theorists over five days in character, culminating in a jaw-dropping singalong at an anti-mask rally. Holocaust deniers are satirized – Borat is gutted to learn the holocaust may not have happened, on account of the role his country played in torturing Jews – and there are rays of hope with the people he meets. A pair of Jewish ladies in a synagogue; a ‘babysitter’ for his ball-and-chained daughter, who says she should be able to drive a car and not have to have plastic surgery.
And then there’s the chilling Rudy Guiliani interview which has to be seen to be believed. This is proper political satire focused on intolerance, ignorance and lack of empathy. Cohen and Baklova are bona fide comedy warriors exposing ground-level and top-tier prejudice. It’s also very, very funny. Weaponised political comedy that doesn’t let America off the hook, this needs to be seen now.
Available on Amazon Prime now
words KEIRON SELF