Borat is back! This time with political stunts and a girl.
Sacha Baron Cohen reprises his notorious role as a rude journalist in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivering a Prodigious Bribery to the American Regime to Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” which will air Friday on Amazon Prime, less than two weeks before the presidential one. Choice.
The sequel to the 2006 film follows Borat to the United States, this time with her 15-year-old daughter Tatur (played by Maria Bakalova), where they navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and upcoming elections.
Was the sequel as scandalous and memorable as the original? Film critics have more commonly positive reviews for the mockumentary, which has a new 85% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
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USA TODAY film critic Brian Truitt gave the film ★★ 1/2 stars out of four, calling it “pretty funny” and praised Cohen for “his absolute commitment to Borat’s character. “
“‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’ has a strangely strong ending that will pay for at least some of the softest facets of the family circle dynamics, and ends with an activist note,” he wrote.
Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang praised the fake documentary for its daring antics and called it “scattered, funny, and strangely moving. “
“Borat’s latest unselvableness exists to remind us that we live in a mad world and conformity is contrary to his cheerfully anarchic spirit,” he wrote.
Eric Kohn of IndieWire gave the film an A-minus. “Borat is rarely very awake, yet his time has come: this fiery humor logo has never felt more essential. Combining activism and entertainment, Baron Cohen’s most productive film to date gives us new reasons to fear the world, but also permission to laugh at it. “
Although Nicholas Barber, of the BBC, said it was first “worrying” to see if the film would live up to the original 2006 comedy, it eventually gave the film “passionate” 4 out of five stars.
“Having been made for an express political purpose, the next film will not age as well as the past ‘Borat’,” he writes. “But it is the irrelevance of the headlines that makes it so fascinating, and it is the bubbly fury of the existing policy that makes it so stimulating. There are many movies as urgent as this. “
Variety’s Peter Debruge praised Cohen for merging comedy with political activism in what he calls “an astonishing act of comedian with built-in viral potential. “
“At the same time noisy and relevant, the film promises to be the kind of October wonder capable of making other people laugh, shape public discourse and attract the electorate as a serious message it can’t. “
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