by Conan Simmons – October 23, 2020 – 5:26 am
Fourteen years after the first Borat moviefilm satirized America, Sacha Baron Cohen revives his character for another mockumentary centered on the 2020 U.S. election and the still ongoing Coronavirus pandemic. Taking on mostly southern conservatives he allows people to reveal themselves by focusing on their reactions to his pro-republican antics.
The expectedly thin plot starts with Borat Sagdiyev getting a reprieve from a prison labor camp where he is being punished for making Kazakhstan look bad in his previous 2006 moviefilm. Learning that the U.S. of A. is in bad shape because of Barack Obama, Borat is assigned the mission to make prodigious bribe to American vice premier Mike Pence. The bribe? A monkey that is Kazakhstan’s number one porn star.
Once in America Borat finds that his daughter, Tutar Sagdiyev has stowed away to accompany him. Being recognized as he walks the streets he quickly goes to a costume shop to buy a disguise. This sets up a round of gags as Borat and Tutar visit a few stores causing humorous awkward scenes. The payoff comes as a visit to a cake shop that ends with a very funny visit to a planned parenthood clinic run by a pro-life pastor.
Eventually Borat, having decided his daughter would make suitable bribe, takes Tutar to Macon, Georgia where they participate in a debutante ball. For the viewer it starts by feeling very weird that such a thing still exists in 2020 but all the participants seemingly take it seriously. Of course, Borat stirs things up by asking one of the fathers how much he thinks Tutar is worth, when the man’s daughter overhears the answer she is appropriately disgusted. The dance Borat and Tutar do next is one of the funniest scenes of low-brow humor and the various reactions from the crowd run the gamut from appalled to strangely supportive.
How Borat is able to enter the CPAC convention, where Mike Pence is speaking, dressed in full Ku Klux Klan robes is far more telling about the Republican party than the reaction to Borat who, disguised as Trump complete with Tutar over his shoulder, heckles Pence and gets thrown out of the convention.
The first half of this subsequent moviefilm is hilarious fun. The second half reality starts to set in as Borat wanders empty streets during the Covid-19 shutdown. He somehow manages to get a couple of hardcore Republican conspiracy theorists to take him in for a few days. The film goes into a montage, perhaps the jokes weren’t landing hard enough that it is edited this way. There are moments showing snippets of conversations they have about Democrats that feel way too serious and filled with ignorant conspiracies.
The next segment is at a rally of Trump supporting, giant Confederate flag waving, Nazi saluting Republicans complete with fully automatic assault rifles. Why anyone feels the need to have guns like that to protect themselves in the United States of America only shows their complete fear of and disrespect for the country. How Sacha Baron Cohen and his costar, Maria Bakalova, remain in character throughout the sequence is a true testament to their acting. This sequence is also the film’s thesis as it shows through comedy how very real the situation is in America.
It’s the climax of the film that is making headlines during the films release on Amazon Prime streaming. It involves a bedroom encounter between Trump advisor Rudolph Giuliani and Borat’s daughter, Tutar. As I see it, this should most definitely be the end of Rudy Giuliani’s career.
The scene in question starts as Tutar is interviewing Giuliani in a Manhattan hotel room. Tutar is overly flirtatious throughout, obviously setting up whatever prank-joke Borat is going to pull. Tutar and Giuliani then go into a bedroom where Tutar awkwardly removes the mic from Giuliani’s shirt. Giuliani places his hand on her back in a none-too-professional way and asks for her phone number and address. This could have played innocently enough into the scene, until Giuliani lays back on the bed and shoves his hand full on down his pants.
With his hand down his pants past his wrist the amount of time he takes quickly becomes suspicious and the motion coming from his pants isn’t normally associated with tucking in one’s shirt. The film itself seems to notice as there is an abrupt shift in tone from the rest of the movie. Borat bursts in to stop whatever seems to be taking place in what feels like a joke gone wrong. Borat is wearing an outrageous outfit that must have been for whatever joke he had planned. The outfit is never explained as Giuliani reacts with guilty righteous indignation forcing Borat and Tutar to flee.
The media is playing up the fact that Borat’s daughter in the film is supposed to be fifteen. While that is true, that plot point is never used in the scene with Giuliani until Borat bursts in screaming “She’s only fifteen!” Regardless, the behavior exhibited by Giuliani is very creepy, creepier than anything else preceding in the movie. The only way this scene doesn’t damage the humor of the film is due to the awkward seriousness being cut short. Almost as soon as Giuliani starts getting mad about being caught, Borat and Tutar rush out of the hotel.
Sacha Baron Cohen does a fantastic job at bringing together this zany idea and making it relevant as a valid social satire. His costar, Maria Bakalova is outstanding as being equally committed to character regardless of situation. The directing by Jason Wolinor, known mostly as a director of sitcoms, keeps the film from losing focus making a coherent movie out of numerous skits.
Overall, ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’ is the must-see film of the year, though it isn’t for the easily offended. A laugh out loud comedy that makes a statement about the world we live in. The first Borat moviefilm in 2006 was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. This subsequent moviefilm may just match that acclaim.