A Brief History
On October 23, 2020, the comedy loving movie world was treated to the release (on Amazon Prime Video) of the second Borat movie, this one given the prodigious title of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. The sequel to the 2006 Sacha Baron Cohen blockbuster, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, the film features the Sacha Baron Cohen character Borat, a bumpkin from the glorious nation of Kazakhstan. While Kazakhstan is indeed a real place (the largest landlocked nation on Earth), the country of Borat is a loosely based parody of that nation, depicted as backward and poverty stricken beyond comprehension. Somehow, the ridiculous becomes sublime when SB Cohen takes over and this latest cinematic effort is almost as funny as the first.
Digging Deeper
As we said above, the unflattering depiction of Kazakhstan is a sore point with the fine people of that nation and because of the Borat films they have felt the need to mount a publicity campaign to set the world straight about their country! Perhaps if we were of Kazak descent, we might not be so inclined to laugh, but laugh we did! The Kazak language is also torn to shreds in the film, a fictional blend of Slavic words with gibberish thrown in. Another politically sensitive topic involved in the fictional Borat character is pervasive anti-Semitism, which for Borat is a lampooning of that particular social evil, though some American characters are duped into revealing their own true anti-Semitic feelings.
Getting back to the plot, Borat finds himself working at hard labor in a concentration type camp, punished for the failure of his mission to the United States in the first film. He is given a chance at redemption by being sent back to the USA to pay a major bribe to Vice President Mike Pence, the bribe being a valuable Chimpanzee (called a monkey in the film), but the chimp dies enroute, though we will not reveal how and why. Meanwhile, Borat’s teenage daughter sneaks into the US to join Borat on his adventure, though he does not want her to do so. He then hits on the idea using his daughter as the gift/bribe in place of the dead chimp. Failing to secure Vice President Pence as the bribe recipient, Borat goes to plan B, making the offer to Rudy Giuliani instead, seen by Borat as another powerful American close to the President.
The scene with Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova (real life age 24) as Tutar Sagdiyev, the 15 year old daughter of Borat, pretending to be a legitimate journalist interviewing Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and current attorney for President Trump, in a hotel room is controversial to say the least. Without revealing every little detail, suffice to say Rudy is caught with his hand in his pants and it looks pretty bad for him. The scene is a set up seemingly specifically designed to embarrass Giuliani, and some movie watchers might find the tactic tasteless and crass. We found it funny, but we also realize we might think differently if it was us being set up for humiliation! Otherwise, Gotcha Rudy!
The running time of 96 minutes goes fast, and if you like the first film, you will certainly like this one, too. Even if you are not familiar with Borat or Sacha Baron Cohen, we think you will find the film at least moderately funny. With the pandemic keeping folks out of actual theaters, the movie is available on Amazon streaming service. Be prepared to explain the anti-Jewish jokes to your kids if you allow youngsters to watch the movie.
Obviously, we liked the film and recommend it to fans of Sacha Baron Cohen. “Jak sie masz!”
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Michael. Famous Person: Sacha Baron Cohen Biography. Amazon, 2020.
Tracy, Kathleen. Sacha Baron Cohen: The Unauthorized Biography: From Cambridge to Kazakhstan. St. Martin’s Griffin, 2007.
The featured image in this article is of a poster, and the copyright for it is most likely owned by either the publisher or the creator of the work depicted. It is believed that the use of scaled-down, low-resolution images of posters to provide critical commentary on the film in question on servers in the United States qualifies as fair use under the copyright law of the United States.
