Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
I thought I was giving myself the easy films to recap this time around. After all, for people of a certain age, namely old geezers like us, I can simply say that the second Borat film is much the same schtick as the first, but the joke hasn’t quite worn thin yet, and that’s pretty much all the information you need. Take the rest of the review off.
However, disturbing as it seems to me now, that first Borat film came out fourteen years ago, and there’s a possibility some listeners weren’t born then. Oy Vey. So, perhaps a touch more detail is warranted. Sasha Baron Cohen’s Borat is an, of course, wildly fictional Kazakhstani journalist who was previously sent by his government to make some Cultural Learnings in the U.S.A for to Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. It went poorly, and was in the main an excuse to interview some wildly racist bigots through then lens of Borat’s own wild racist bigotry, and a good laugh was had by all us liberal bubblepeople, safe in the knowledge that wildly racist bigots would never again wind up in positions of great power. Oy Vey.
So, having humiliated Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Borat’s been sentenced to hard labour for the past 1.4 decades, but he has an opportunity for redemption. The country’s Premier wants to bring Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan back to international prominence by Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, namely delivering Kazakh Minister of Culture, Johnny the Monkey to President Donald Trump. That’ll sort it out.
So off he goes, although sadly Johnny the Monkey does not survive shipping, having been eaten by a stowaway, Borat’s female son, Maria Bakalova’s Tutar. Given that Borat’s face, moustache and mankini is still relatively well known, its now often falling to Bakalova to provoke a number of the reactions in the various people they encounter on their way to giving a replacement gift – Tutar herself – to Rudy Giuliani, in what was his most cringeworthy scene for a about a week before that whole Four Seasons thing.
A lot like the first film, it’s about half and half interviews with various types of dickwad, be that racist, sexist, or particularly given Borat’s own views, anti-semitic, and half advancing what passes for the linking narrative with some equally wild, outrageous statements going back and forth between Borat and Tutar, and their government via fax, who’s ultimate scheme for Borat is perhaps the best gag in the piece. Apart from the Running of the American.
You are going to have to have a high tolerance for cringe comedy, as there’s a hell of a lot of cringing involved here. I’ve always thought the non-interview segments in this kind of thing were funnier than just exposing another yet another yahoo, and for me that’s still the case here, apart perhaps from that one impossibly kind Jewish lady, who is a saint.
If I’m honest, I could have lived the rest of my life without seeing another Borat film, and while I enjoyed this sequel well enough, and laughed a great deal, I could still stand to live the rest of my life without seeing another Borat film. I don’t think the world was crying out for a sequel, but it’s here, coming out of nowhere, and it’s pretty funny, and I’m not going to complain about that.