RATING: 😒

America’s been around for about two-hundred and forty-four years, and has sucked ass for almost all of it. It should surprise no one that a nation built on the gross exploitation of human life would blossom into a calloused, inequitable, many-armed imperialist monster, but here we are, caught again between nihilists willing to perpetuate a political death cult, and those of us who would prefer things to be just a little bit better, maybe, please.

Against one of the cruelest, stupidest, and most openly fascistest leaders in our nation’s history, many of us have taken to the streets, formed support networks, and generally campaigned to make our voices heard and make life in this truly morose year more hopeful and worth living. Of course, most of us aren’t rich Hollywood liberals, who are content to make the same tired, moronic jokes they’ve made for the last four years at the nasty spray tan man who says naughty things on television.

If you’ve been drawing breath since the beginning of Trump’s administration, you know the insufferable assholes I’m talking about. It’s Alec Baldwin on Saturday Night Live. It’s The Daily Show and friends. It’s the specific brand of people who make tweets about Democratic politicians as Harry Potter characters, the people who revered Ruth Bader Ginsberg as a #girlboss, and the people who think it’s still funny or clever to make covfefe or piss tape jokes in the year of our lord 20 fucking 20. Largely, it’s the people who buy so deeply into the neoliberal cult of milquetoast personality that they believe ousting Trump is the biggest and only problem facing the United States, when in fact they’re trading out a President who openly puts children in cages for one who does it quietly. It’s a positively uncritical state of existence which I almost envy.

The most recent and most public member of this dire club is Sacha Baron Cohen, reminding us that there’s never a limit on how much a celebrity can embarrass themselves on-screen. Known for his rich catalogue of “satirical” character work, good ol’ SBC has made a living off saying offensive shit as Ali G, Brüno, and of course, Borat - but it’s okay! You can laugh at the completely awful jokes coming out of his mouth because it’s a Democrat saying it and not a gross Republican. It’s totally cool; it’s just satire, bro.

What exactly he intends to lampoon remains beyond me, but SBC followed up his laugh-free TV series Who Is America? with the equally horrendous Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm, referred to as Borat 2 from here out. This is, of course, a sequel to poorly-aged but watchable “comedy classic” Borat. It is a follow-up so painfully unnecessary and thoroughly unfunny that it not only puts a nail in the coffin of Orange Man/White House humor, but questions whether the entertainment industry is capable of making any important political commentary whatsoever (it isn’t).

Before we go any further, I will come clean and admit that over the last year, I’ve watched the original Borat 48 times, once a week, for the aptly titled podcast Borat Club. What began as a stupid Internet joke quickly became a test of willpower, before resolving into abject tragedy at the announcement of Borat 2. I mention this because it means that my opinion of SBC inherently skews negative; I’m sick to death of his stupid fucking face and awful humor. That said, I know more about Borat than almost any other human alive, and I’m uniquely qualified to assess that yes, despite what many critics have said, Borat 2 is a cesspool of poor jokes and non-comedy. I find it important to discuss the sequel not to openly and shamelessly brutalize it, but to discuss why exactly it fails, and why it’s time we all need to move on from this particular brand of neoliberal humor. So where do we start?

Well, Borat is a prisoner. Fourteen years after the events of Borat, Kazakhstan’s best-known journalist is doing hard labor thanks to the shame his first documentary inflicted upon his country. His wife has been stolen, and his producer Azamat, we find out, has been turned into a chair Chain Saw Massacre style because SBC didn't want to pay his actor to appear in the sequel. Borat finds a chance for redemption when the government instructs him to deliver Johnny the Monkey, Kazakhstan’s #1 TV/porn star, as a boon to an American politician. Borat sets his sights on Mike Pence and heads overseas, only to find his daughter, Tutar, has tagged along and consumed the simian sex machine.

In addition, Borat finds he’s too well-known from the first film, and must disguise himself to blend in among Americans. Cycling through a stable of groan-inducing characters such as “Cliff Safari” and “Professor Phillip Drummond III,” Borat takes to salons and debutante balls across America to transform Tutar into a “hotzi” instead of a “notzi.” He then attempts to pawn her as a slave, first to Mike Pence, then to Rudy Giuliani, before learning a lesson and realizing family is more important than human trafficking. Also, Coronavirus breaks out halfway through and there’s an unbelievable final twist about Borat’s involvement with the pandemic. The end!

If Borat was a “quintessential” post-9/11 film, Borat 2 is a “quintessential” Trump-era film. While Borat exposed Americans’ widespread fear of foreigners by, uh, making fun of foreigners, Borat 2 attempts to expose the cultish mindset of the alt-right and other assorted chodes who currently shelter under Donald Trump’s disquieting umbrella. The problem with this approach is inherent and immediate: these scumsuckers already expose themselves publicly and shamelessly, at pretty much every given opportunity. Putting on a stupid costume only raises their guard and makes them less likely to be openly awful.

Trump’s gallery of slimeballs are less subtle than Batman villains, his unhinged statements have transformed public health into a proud culture war, and you can spot QAnon bumper stickers in the wild without difficulty. For those that don’t know, this is the alarmingly popular Internet/Trumposphere conspiracy which posits high-level pedophile Democrats are torturing kids to harvest adrenaline from their bodies, and that Trump would dismantle the government in order to expose them. It is the trope of conservatism as the last bastion against degeneracy taken to the highest level, and it is something people believe in our real human world.

Asserting our current landscape is “beyond parody” feels to me lazy and reductive, but I do believe such commentary lies beyond Sacha Baron Cohen’s grasp and ability. Not three weeks after the release of Borat 2, a film where our main man leads a song about beheading journalists, former Trump bootlicker Steve Bannon suggested we liberate the craniums of Dr. Anthony Fauci and other “federal bureaucrats.” The situation, clearly, is dire, and remains so after the 2020 election. However, all SBC can unleash is a deluge of incest jokes, anti-semitism, recycled pranks, and political jabs which hit with all the white-hot fury of calling the President “Donald Drumpf.” In the same vein, one of Borat 2’s favorite bits is referring to the Vice President as “Michael Penis.” Damn dude! Got ‘em!!

This particular joke reaches its nadir when, about halfway through the film, Borat finally tries to deliver Tutar at a Mike Pence speech. He infiltrates the Republican event in a Klan outfit (wow, funny!), then dons a Trump costume and slings Tutar over his shoulder. Busting into the auditorium, Borat calls out to Michael Penis with little response aside from various jeers. He breaks into a half-hearted “four more years” chant before security drags him out…...and that's the scene. One of the film’s biggest moments tracks less as sticking it to the man, and more as a limp effort by someone no longer willing or able to actually make a statement. It's akin to watching your drunk dad pulled offstage at karaoke; the whole thing is just sort of sad and embarrassing. How many times by now have we seen SBC and others like him restrained for making a ruckus? There's nothing new or incisive here.

Such stagnation is rife. Borat 2 comes across as a 2006 film addressing 2020 problems; ultimately nothing about Sacha Baron Cohen’s humor feels evolved or changed from the first film outside a smaller number of racial slurs. Operating in a landscape of candid discomfort comedy now dominated by smarter and simply funnier talents such as Eric Andre, Nathan Fielder, and YouTube documentarian All Gas No Brakes, SBC can't seem to adapt his approach beyond adding new disguises and smartphones. Many people have said the funniest prank is when Borat uses a phone for the first time and broadcasts Pornhub on a big screen in, uh, an empty electronics store with a single guy on staff. Hilarious.

It doesn't help Borat 2’s big political statement that SBC is perfectly happy with “punching down” for the sake of his comedy, a problem also present in the first film, but ultimately inherent when you're churning out an Eastern European stereotype for laughs. It's difficult to argue you're rallying against a regime when you're willing to lock arms and throw identities affected by such politics under the bus. Kazakhstan is still the butt of the joke, he still pushes grotesque Jewish caricatures for no payoff whatsoever, and he decides one of the biggest punchlines of the film should be a man in women’s underwear joke. Thanks Sacha! Very progressive and cool of you!

This tiresome comedy occupies the same space as Anderson Cooper recently deigning the President an “obese turtle.” The worst thing about Trump is that he's not in shape? Not that he's allowed over 200,000 Americans to die, or that he's openly encouraged an increasingly rabid flank of home-grown American fascism? Alright dude. Whatever man. In both cases, but especially Borat’s, the language and delivery of these jokes says more about the so-called progressivism of their speakers than the failures of their targets. It's just like the nude fight scene in Borat: once you get past the initial shock, you realize the joke is that, oh damn! It looks like two men having sex! Okay. Cool. About what I'd expect from 2006.

In the same vein, Borat has a change of heart near the end of Borat 2, and swoops in to stop his daughter from fucking Rudy Giuliani. He does so by dressing in the aforementioned lingerie and begging Giuliani to screw him. Giuliani is an absolute ghoul, and I'm certain there are many ways to nail him to the wall. This is not one of them. When Rudy barely reacts, we’re left with the image of Sacha Baron Cohen trussed up in women’s clothing, babbling about the techniques he developed while jailed to endure prison rape. That pathetic, low-aimed gag is what resonates here; not any sense that political justice was served. The cherry on top is when Borat drops a golden shower dinger on the way out, something already hyperdated in this administration where every week feels like a month. Again, great job Sacha!

I'll admit that I’m shocked, like genuinely shocked, that Borat 2 isn't more transphobic or homophobic than it already is. Considering Borat’s aforementioned homoerotic nude fight scene (the elevator bit IS still funny after 48 watches), the current landscape of LGBT+ culture, and SBC’s track record with Brüno and portraying other queer-coded SJW-types on Who Is America?, I genuinely expected at least one eye-rolling hair-dyed misfire or t-slur thrown in the mix. To Sacha’s credit, he seems to have realized that being fully offensive isn't the way to go in 2020, but he also can't seem to construct worthwhile bits without employing outdated shock humor.

There’s nothing in Borat 2’s beat-to-beat prank sections as engaging as the first film; none of the “common people” he talks to are entertaining at all. There's no exasperated comedy coach, no genial yet stern driving instructor, and no car salesman who won't say the word “pussy.” Most of Borat 2’s “victims” are faceless nobodies who quietly endure his bullshit for a few minutes before being shuffled off into the void. I can't remember them, and so many more of these interactions feel scripted anyways. They aren't important, largely because Borat 2 reads as though the comedy was directed to fit the narrative, and not the other way around. There's no sense of discovery or chaos or genuine inspiration here; it's a total loss of the punky Jackass vibe that made Borat the biggest movie of 2006.

There's a lot in the film I haven't touched on, but none of it really matters. Our main father and daughter set up a pained fake incest joke where Tutar swallows a plastic baby off a cupcake, leading the pair to an abortion clinic to discuss “the baby inside her.” Borat trundles into a synagogue tricked out as a gauche Jewish caricature, intending to commit suicide by “[waiting] for the next mass shooting.” He gives a bad haircut, asks a hardware store clerk which gas canisters will kill [slur] the best, and spends some time living with a couple QAnon dudes I'm convinced are plants. Tutar has a character arc: she starts nearly feral, gets a makeover, almost gets fake breasts, self-actualizes by learning to masturbate, breaks off from Borat, then becomes a right-wing reporter and nearly bones Rudy Giuliani before reconciling with the ‘Rat.

It should be noted that actress Maria Bakalova had to be in the room while Giuliani groped around at whatever he's got between his legs, and deserves more than whatever she was paid for this. Honestly, addressing everything that deserves criticism in Borat 2 would require about twenty full pages. There's lazy Epstein and Kevin Spacey jokes, a horrible Disney-style Melania Trump cartoon, and of course, SBC’s continued underpayment and exploitation of the performers involved. Elements I enjoyed? The momentary return of Borat’s asshole neighbor and the rehashed soundtrack cues from the first film. There's an alright bit where he faxes back to Kazakhstan and says “chillin’” in a funny way, then a bit at a plastic surgeon where the doctor and Borat and Tutar say “Titties?” “Titties.” back and forth like seven times. That's about it.

As Borat 2 finally concludes with Borat and Tutar living happily in Covid-stricken Kazakhstan, we get two title cards telling us to “VOTE,” or we will “be execute.” It’s as if we've been subjected to a political morality tale nightmare, from which electing Joe Biden is the only salvation. I've got news for you dude! The call is coming from inside the house! The shit in Borat 2 is indeed disturbingly real, and ultimately it’s a little sad to watch SBC throw his goofy costumes against a tide of fascism which is not rising, but is in fact long-festering and has simply been elevated on a highly public scale. It’s like living in a world where the problems of America cropped up overnight after Obama left office, the saintly President who famously never drone bombed children or deported a staggering number of people.

If SBC wants to use Borat as a political mouthpiece, he needs to realize how woefully inadequate his conception of the country’s legitimate faults tends to be. Yes, people are being disgusting and awful and you can go out and make fun of them, but the endemic problem runs deeper and older than that. Unfortunately, I don't believe Sacha Baron Cohen has the capacity to address America’s intrinsic internal rot, mostly because he's in the echelon of moneyed folks who benefit from the system regardless of who’s in the Oval Office. Just like Aaron “Sorkin My Nuts,” SBC is another mainstream liberal who believes the country is only failing because there's a rude, small-handed Cheeto man at the helm. It's unlikely SBC will ever get a wake-up call, but I hope to god it happens before they make Borat 3.

We Didn’t Need BORAT 2