Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Director: Jason Woliner
Quick Impressions:
I paid to see the first Borat twice. That’s because the first time I tried to see it, I started vomiting during the previews. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t let that deter me, but then I continued vomiting, and you can really only vomit so much before they ask you to leave the theater. I didn’t bother to get a refund because I was too busy vomiting. In the end, I vomited so much that I had to go to the emergency room. But my boyfriend (now husband) and I had heard such positive word of mouth about how hilarious the movie was that we paid to see it again. The second time we actually got to see the movie. I liked it better the first time.
I think it’s really important to state clearly right off the bat that I did not like the first Borat. I found it more mean-spirited than funny. The idea of deliberately bringing out the worst in people in order to mock and shame them on film just gets under my skin. Yes, he was able to capture people doing and saying awful, shameful, embarrassing things. But at least some of the time this happened because he preyed on their sense of hospitality to lure them into bad behavior. Some people graciously invite him into their homes and lives, and he violates the laws of hospitality by provoking their worst behavior and showing it to the entire world. There’s just something mean-spirited about it. He goes around looking for the bad in everyone, and then if he can’t find it right away, he keeps manipulating them until he coaxes it out. Yes, it is alarming how awful people can be, but I think in some instances, he uses their desire to be kind to a stranger against them. (It’s like how in crime movies, undercover informants sometimes try to incite crime or elicit damning comments.)
For me, the first Borat is mean-spirited and often merely disgusting rather than funny. (Back in 2006, I also objected on principle to a non-American lampooning American society rather than critiquing the UK, his own home country. But now, we’ve reached such a state of outrageous moral disaster here that I think ridiculing us seems absolutely fair.) (But how is this fair to Kazakhstan? That still puzzles me.)
Maybe the biggest problem with the movie is that it was overhyped and just not all that funny. I would have forgiven all of its flaws if I had found it as funny as some people did. But most of the humor just didn’t work for me.
So there’s my long disclaimer. You must read this review knowing that I did not like the first Borat. I only saw this movie for these reasons: 1) It is a new release available for streaming in this pandemic 2) It streams free on Amazon Prime 3) I wanted to see the Giuliani portion in context 4) I’ve heard some Oscar buzz for Maria Bakalova (though most of it is coming from Sasha Baron Cohen himself 5) I liked Baron Cohen’s performance in The Trial of the Chicago 7 and think he’ll probably be Oscar nominated for it.
But I went in as kind of a hostile reviewer.
The Good:
This movie is also not very funny (to me. Humor is subjective.) But it is clever. One thing it does is extremely clever.
As I watched the early scenes introducing Borat’s daughter Tutar, I thought, “Okay, this is just a little too much.”
I mean, she sleeps in filth with the animals, and he explains that in his culture, a daughter is viewed as livestock. She’s uncivilized and dresses like someone’s offensive Halloween costume. I mean, she’s made to look dirty and unkempt, unappealing, like someone who has been malnourished and maltreated, like someone who has always lived in squalor and abuse. And she has no idea how to behave around people. This is done in a particularly obnoxious, cartoonish, over-the-top way.
I thought, “This is just ridiculous. There’s no subtlety to this. It’s too cartoonish to be effective. This is just silly and ridiculous.”
Then Borat and Tutar come to the United States, and he decides to take steps to make her more attractive to an American man. He views her as his property, and he wants to pay money to make her look and behave in a more marketable way.
And everywhere he goes, he’s able to find presentable, polite, real people to accept his money and meet all of his bizarre demands.
It’s like the beginning presents us with something so absurd and unappealing and over-the-top that we wince and say, “No one could believe that!” And then he turns around and reveals, “Surprise! That’s what America looks like on the inside!”
It is very hard to believe in the realness of his interactions in this film. It must have been difficult to find people unfamiliar with Borat. And sometimes encounters are edited in such a way that we wonder if they’re authentic. I’ll talk more about this later. But whether or not some of these “real” moments are staged, we know already that the people he runs into exist in this country.
There’s the crisis pregnancy counselor who doesn’t care that the father got his daughter pregnant. (Actually, this encounter is easier to believe than others. This man looks genuinely in the dark about what’s happening and probably does not know Borat.) There’s the plastic surgeon willing to give the fifteen-year-old daughter breast enhancement (and exchange sexually suggestive remarks with her) because the rich father is paying. There’s the woman who wants to teach her to be a sugar baby.
It is not surprising or new information. But it is sobering to see how unappealing our nation would look if we dressed it up in a way that let its beliefs show on the outside.
But honestly, for me, the (pleasant) shock of this movie is the way it showcases the goodness and positivity of two characters, babysitter Jeanise Jones and Holocaust survivor Judith Dim Evans.
After the film, I said to my husband, “I do find it a significant improvement that the two most memorable scenes in this film belong to women modeling goodness.” That’s quite a switch from the first film and shows that if you look for goodness in people, you will eventually find that, too.
The movie is worth watching just to see Judith Dim Evans say that she’s a Holocaust survivor and that the Holocaust happened. She comes across as such a morally centered good and loving person. (It is disheartening to hear that after she died, her family sued, saying that she was distressed to discover the movie was “a comedy intended to mock the Holocaust and Jewish culture.” But Baron Cohen says he informed her of what he was doing, and the lawsuit was dismissed. As much as Borat isn’t my thing, I’d say it’s clear that Baron Cohen is not mocking the Holocaust. And her interview is clearly being used as she intended. It in no way mocks her or what she stands for.)
Jeanise Jones was, apparently, shocked to discover that she was a part of a comedy. She thought she was participating in a documentary about women from third world countries and did wish she had received appropriate financial compensation for her role, but now Baron Cohen has donated $100,000 to her church. So…? I’m not sure about his tactics, honestly, but her scenes in the film are good.
Also, even though the movie’s humor still doesn’t usually work for me, some lines become a bit funnier in retrospect, in a Monty Python kind of way. There is a certain absurdity to some lines and situations that is funnier when recalled than during a first watch of the scene.
Baron Cohen himself has pointed out that the actress playing his daughter, Maria Bakalova, often had to do her scenes in one take, which does require some skill (although the same can be said of any actor appearing in a stage play). I suppose it is true that nailing scenes under such stressful circumstances must be difficult. I’m not sure that her acting is Oscar-worthy, but she has nerves of steel. I’ll give her that for sure. The thing that seems more difficult to me is to deliver her own lines in her native Bulgarian while having a conversation with Borat who is speaking Hebrew. But of course, they are scripted lines.
Best Scene:
For me, this is a toss up between the part in the synagogue and any of the scenes featuring “babysitter” Jeanise Jones. For sure these moments are all the best parts of the movie.
Actually, even though the movie was not my favorite, it was worth it to feel the warmth and goodness of Judith Dim Evans. It’s also touching to see how much Jones wants to help Borat help his daughter.
Best Scene Visually:
I suppose that if you find the movie funny, the Father/Daughter dance is the scene which most relies on visual humor. This scene I actually find a little baffling. What is it trying to show, exactly? Is the idea that these fathers are obsessed with their daughters’ fertility and female bodies? The various asides to the other fathers work better than the dance if the goal is to reveal repugnant behavior by the other attendees. I suppose if you simply want to lampoon the idea of having a ball to celebrate a daughter becoming a woman, then this gets right to the heart of the matter. But it seems like actual attendees would be baffled, rather than shamed. Scenes like this actually make me confused about what Baron Cohen is trying to achieve.
Best Action Sequence:
Bakalova is at her best during the scene with Giuliani. During this scene, I thought, “You know this movie would be better without Borat. He should have sent just her alone into every set up. She could have fooled more people.”
I’m not completely sure that this scene is as damning as Baron Cohen seems to believe. (For one thing, no matter what is happening, she keeps touching his thigh.) Clearly Giuliani is taken in by her, actually deceived. That always makes me feel vaguely sad for the person being deceived. Once you have someone’s trust, must you betray them? There’s a little tragedy in that every time.
To me, the most damning thing Giuliani did here was to let this scene appear in the movie. I mean, isn’t he supposed to be a brilliant lawyer? But he must have signed something, or Baron Cohen would have had more trouble using the scene.
The Negatives:
It’s extremely hard to believe in the authenticity of most of these encounters. In the first movie (much as I disliked it), there’s a voyeuristic glee we can take in seeing the bad behavior of idiots exposed. But in this movie, it’s really hard to tell who is getting pranked and who is in on the joke.
I don’t know for sure, but my experience of watching makes clear to me that most of the people interacting with Borat are very aware that some sort of tomfoolery is going on. Perhaps they are unfamiliar with Borat, but they still can tell this guy is too weird to be for real. They either don’t care or they are being paid not to care. The guy who sends the faxes, the guy who sells the cage. These people 100 percent for sure know that something kooky is going on. They have either agreed to participate, or they are willingly going along with all these antics because they are being paid by the weirdo. I’m not sure why the lady would so calmly decorate the cake with that message, but (assuming that she hasn’t been told some cover story explaining it), then my question is, how many bakeries did they have to go into to get the result they wanted?
The crisis pregnancy center encounter felt real to me. The conservative women’s group also looked very real. The father/daughter dance looked pretty real, too. I’m not sure what’s going on in the plastic surgery center. The doctor did seem genuinely fooled, but surely the woman taking the money has the sense that he is up to something. (I do like the line about letting perverts come in and watch. That’s the kind of thing that had a Monty Python type appeal for me later as I looked back on the movie.)
Clearly the two conspiracy theorists who host Borat in their home have been told something more than we see on camera because he’s filmed in their home from so many different camera angles that they must be aware a camera crew is there. (I’m always wondering how much money is given in exchange for participation. Maybe that’s part of Baron Cohen’s point, that everyone here is for sale. Maybe that’s what all those $1 bills in the doctor’s office is supposed to be about.)
The way the film is edited makes it impossible to tell what is real and what is manufactured. In the end, I’m only honestly 100 percent positive that Judith Dim Evans was a Holocaust survivor. I suppose if you’re going to come away sure of one thing, that the Holocaust really happened is a worthy one.
That’s the other thing, though. The film would have been stronger if someone had told Borat in person that the Holocaust didn’t happen. We already know what kind of nonsense can be found on Facebook. There are plenty of Holocaust deniers. Why aren’t they tricked into being on camera? Is he scared? But that doesn’t make sense. He wasn’t too scared to infiltrate the conservative women’s group and try to make fools of them, so why would he be scared to hang out with some Nazis?
The thing is, not one of the revelations he delivers is shocking. Borat is not exposing anything new. We already know that people hold the views he’s getting them to say on camera. When he sneaks into that outdoor rally–why did he go to all that trouble? Everybody knows already that the people there hold these beliefs. You can go up to these people in real life without bothering to disguise yourself and ask, “Excuse me, can you affirm your political beliefs for me?” and they will gladly do so. They are not at all ashamed of having these beliefs because they think that they are right.
Frankly, given some of the bizarre, inflammatory stuff circulating daily on the internet, I’m disappointed Borat couldn’t have come up with more shocking material. He’s not really exposing anything. Everybody already knows all of this stuff.
The careful editing also left me with the impression that he is soliciting some of the more violent things that those two conspiracy theorists say.
A large part of me wonders if this movie set out to be something else, and then it all fell apart, and they had to re-imagine it at the eleventh hour to salvage it. Maybe first too many people recognized Borat, and then the pandemic happened. That might not be the case, but it feels that way.
Overall:
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm does reveal that our country allows women to be treated pretty badly and contains a lot people who believe conspiracy theories. Of course, everyone already knew this. The movie isn’t exactly good, but it does allow Jeanise Jones and Judith Dim Evans to reveal that goodness does exist, so I’m grateful to it for that.