Somehow, 14 years have passed since Sacha Baron Cohen, in character as Kazakh journalist Borat, wrestled in the nude in a hotel with his obese companion Azamat and entered the hearts of moviegoers everywhere. The Borat phenomenon caused a lasting ripple effect that outdid perhaps even that of Austin Powers, as “Very niiiice!” effectively, and welcomingly, supplanted Mike Myers’ “Yeah baby” as a go-to catchphrase impression for years to come (on the odd occasion, I still inexplicably find myself saying “myyy wiiiife” amongst friends, and, admittedly, sometimes even when I’m alone, as if it were the most normal thing in the world).
A lot has happened in 14 years. Obama’s entire presidency, for one, was a Borat-free time, as apparently his American ID unlocking powers weren’t as urgently needed in that time. In 2006, three years into the Bush administration’s War on Terror, Borat resonated in a big way. It felt bold, revelatory, and original, bolstered by its considerable shock factor of messing with real people in real situations, and creatively parlaying that into incisive satire. It helped that it was also hilarious. If nothing else, one had to tip their hat to Cohen’s balls for ingeniously manipulating various outlandish scenarios while staying in character. As we reckoned with the political machinations in the fallout of 9/11, the injustices and indignities of Bush’s presidency (which in one of 2020’s weirdest bizarro impulses, have been somewhat diluted), and distorted, destructive islamophobic images would hugely impact the daily lives of countless people, Cohen and director Larry Charles’ not-quite-a-funhouse-mirror rightly made America the butt of the joke and by its own ignorant doing. (To a lesser extent, their 2009 follow-up, Bruno, captured some of this magic in a different context, but the returns were already then diminishing).
Fast-forward to 2020, where the seemingly “covert” mockumentary images that made up Borat are no longer aesthetically divided from the images of how we consume the world at large on a regular basis. With the proliferation of smartphones and public images, what used to seem like distinguishable lines between reality, news, social media, and even comedy itself are certainly more blurred and perhaps less relevant. Donald Trump’s own unbelievable behaviour during his run for office and subsequent first term openly display and egg on the kind of fodder that Cohen used to have to work for. In one sense, the arrival of a Borat sequel just days before Americans cast their votes for either Joe Biden or Trump may seem like an apt time to hit a nerve yet again and reveal America to itself. It reminds one of the liberal instinct of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004 which aimed to thwart Bush’s re-election and failed. The final title card of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, this time helmed by Jason Woliner, even reads, “Now vote or you will be execute.” It’s hard to shake the sense that the edgy exposé nature of the original Borat has here been replaced with the same kind of liberal naïveté that has poisoned the well for many Americans on the left, whether they can stomach punching Biden/Harris on their ballots or not.
Particularly in this endlessly strange and challenging year, after the murder of George Floyd and the resulting upheaval and amidst the incompetent handling of COVID-19 in the United States, you’d think Cohen and co. would have a field day in taking the piss out of America. Weirdly, Black Lives Matter seems to be absent from Borat’s 2020 while COVID is omnipresent purely as a lazy gag and a clumsy obstacle in filming the movie. However naively, there was the feeling while watching the original Borat that we were seeing something uncovered. There is nothing in Subsequent Moviefilm that will surprise anyone. Even its climactic headline-making showstopper wherein a horny Rudy Giuliani inappropriately gives in to the not-so-subtle advances of Borat’s fictional daughter, Tutar (Maria Bakalova), during a hotel room interview—admittedly one of Cohen’s biggest “gets” ever on camera—doesn’t quite carry the impact they expect. It’s not necessarily Woliner and Cohen’s fault that the scene’s unfolding isn’t a shock so much as it is par for the course—in fact it’s rather terrifying that that’s the case—but there’s something off-putting when one considers Tara Reade’s sexual allegations against Joe Biden, apparently off the menu as joke material for Borat, and the coinciding absence of critique against the Democrats in the film, in the same year where the party’s establishment-survivalist maneuvers and numerous hypocrisies came to the forefront. Who is America?, Cohen’s 2018 Showtime miniseries, had far greater scope while consistently creating more effective “gotcha!” moments, whether it was targeting the general public or political figures.
(Aside: Who is America? also featured Nathan Fielder as one of its many collaborators, who in recent years has outdone a lot of Cohen’s own ambitions with his series, Nathan For You).
Subsequent Moviefilm is also paper-thin, with only a small handful of memorable “real-life” scenes and is mostly bogged down by its own clunky narrative diversions as Borat tries to restore dignity to his native Kazakhstan by offering his daughter as a gift to Mike Pence and bonds with her along the way while learning the error of his patriarchal ways. Ultimately, it feels like there is little here to call edgy or bold whatsoever, as it picks at only the most low-hanging fruit, generating laughs, but not the sort of gasps I nostalgically recall from 2006, out of exploiting bottom-of-the-barrel right-wingers. OK, getting a crowd of people to sing along to injecting Obama “with the Wuhan flu” or chopping up journalists “like the Saudis do” has a bit of that ol’ Borat flare. And gut-punching satire aside, Cohen knows how to effectively create cringe-comedy, with memorable scenes revolving around incestuous abortion, untimely menstruation, or joyously celebrating the existence of the Holocaust whilst in a synagogue. I laughed. Quite a few times, actually. And the occasional bit had me cover my eyes and mouth momentarily out of disbelief. But that’s mostly because I’m prone to secondary embarrassment. And as I sit with the film afterward, it’s a different sort of secondary embarrassment I’m struck with.