Sacha Baron Cohen has done it again! Almost. If I had not seen the first Borat, I would have said that this move was just phenomenal. However, my roommates and I decided to watch the first movie after we finished the second, and I had forgotten how hilarious it was.
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm follows a Kazakhstanian reporter who must redeem his transgressions from the last movie (where he mostly just embarrassed his country) by bringing a gift to some of Trump’s closest supporters in order to gain his favor and put Kazakhstan on the in with the world’s most powerful leaders. When his original plan does not work out, he must try and offer his own daughter as this gift.
The Borat in this film seemed to have a lot more heart (and a more cohesive storyline) than the original. We actually do see some genuine moments between him and his daughter, and the movie is less focused on Borat’s shenanigans and more on following a plot line. I liked this aspect, however it felt much less like a mockumentary as it did an actual movie, and that was not exactly what I had sat down expecting to watch.
I did particularly enjoy the role of his daughter, and I would say that she was possibly as funny if not funnier than Sacha Baron Cohen. The two of them worked well together and had great chemistry when improvising the different scenes, and I liked how she made him seem more human. I also thought she did some great and hilarious acting on her own as well, and it was nice to have more of a variety of scenes than just Borat making a fool of himself. She had a nice character arc, and I do think she brought the movie up from being just average to pretty good, because another movie of just Borat may have seemed repetitive or uninteresting.
I also had forgotten how incredibly raunchy and offensive Borat is, and it really made me laugh to see him in Texas, asking for horrible things from people and them not blinking an eye. My roommates and I kept having to remind ourselves that other than Borat and his daughter, these were not paid actors, just people who had signed a contract and agreed to be in something that they had no idea what it was. I really enjoyed watching him make fun of pro-choice people, those who believe Coronavirus hoaxes, and just Trump supporters in general. It was also definitely a bit scary seeing how many people did not even seem fazed when Borat said something horribly offensive or wrong, because they truly believed it. Especially when he stopped at a Trump rally, and we saw people heil Hitler, sing about killing various types of people, and generally be incredibly offensive.
Overall, I would say the movie was good, but not even close in caliber to the original. But I definitely thoroughly enjoyed it, and I would recommend for anyone who has a thick skin and doesn’t get easily uncomfortable! It is currently available on Amazon Prime Video.
