When Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan hit in 2006, it was a cultural phenomenon. Everyone had a Borat impression in their back pocket, and audiences were astounded at how star and co-writer Sacha Baron Cohen even pulled off such an audacious quasi-documentary where he would fool Americans with his foreigner-rube schtick. The Borat character had been part of Cohen’s Da Ali G Show, but he was still under-the-radar enough to walk amongst Americans unremarked. 14 years later and Borat is back in an America that’s even more disturbing than the one he traveled before. With his daughter Tutar (Maria Bakalova) in tow, Jason Woliner’s Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan doesn’t quite recapture the magic of the original, but it also has a sharper target as Cohen repeatedly goes after American misogyny by comparing it to his comically dark fictions about how Kazak women should be treated. When Subsequent Moviefilm works, it gets you right back to the place where you’re crying from laughter and shocked at how Cohen and his crew pulled off such daring social stunts.

Picking up fourteen years after the events of the first movie, Borat (Cohen) was an international success, but because his movie made Kazakhstan look foolish, he was sentenced to the gulag. However, the rise of Donald Trump and his affection for strongmen provides an opportunity for the Kazak regime, and they want to use Borat as their messenger. His task is to deliver Kazakhstan’s greatest celebrity, Johnny the Monkey, as a gift to Mike Pence, but when he arrives in America and opens Johnny’s crate, Borat is surprised to find his teenage daughter Tutar instead. He decides she’ll be the gift, and Tutar is ecstatic because she dreams of living in a golden cage like her fairy tale hero, Melania Trump. The pair set off across America getting in various misadventures along the way.

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Image via Amazon Prime Video

I won’t spoil any of the big jokes and surprises, but I would caution that viewers shouldn’t go into Subsequent Moviefilm expecting a cavalcade of famous Republicans for a takedown similar to Cohen’s TV series Who Is America? Instead, Cohen wisely tries to keep his focus on misogyny and what Americans deem acceptable. As always, part of Borat’s schtick is showing that that retailers will put up with just about anything in order to make a sale, but also that part of the American character is go-along-to-get-along. We’ll tolerate the horrible things someone says because we don’t want to create conflict, and that allows someone like Cohen to come in and make fun of various hypocrisies and destructive social norms.

Borat’s casual misogyny is nothing new to the character, and the film gets a lot of mileage out of the “backwards” Kazak beliefs, especially as they’re put side-by-side with an America that’s just as backwards but in different ways whether it’s debutante balls or restricting access to abortion. Where the framework struggles a bit is that Borat’s misogyny is lessened by learning to love his daughter, which kind of smacks of the whole, “As the father of a daughter, I can’t be sexist” canard. The father-daughter story makes for a nice emotional thread for the whole film, and Cohen has a more-than-game partner in Bakalova, but ultimately Borat’s awakening can still only come because a woman he’s related to showed him her humanity.

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Image via Amazon Prime Video

That may sound like an unfair criticism of a very silly movie that still has all the sophomoric and juvenile humor we’ve come to expect from Cohen, but Cohen knows he’s taking direct aim at how women are treated rather than the more free-for-all approach of the first film. And I appreciate that he’s at least considering that relationship, especially since Tutar is the film’s secret weapon. Subsequent Moviefilm acknowledges that due to Borat’s popularity, he can no longer go around unrecognized, so Tutar becomes the vehicle for some of the film’s greatest gags or she works as a scene partner while Borat is in disguise. The Catch-22 is that if you only sent out Tutar on her own, people would call it a Borat ripoff, so you need to keep making Borat part of the story.

Obviously, if you didn’t like the first Borat, there’s nothing here for you, and I imagine we’ll have to deal with the same tedious conversations from 2006 like how unfair Cohen is being and how dare he show a lack of tolerance to the intolerant. Some will clutch their pearls at how dark some of the comedy can go, and others will bemoan the crassness of some of the jokes. Subsequent Moviefilm is not for them, and since it’s a sequel, people should definitely know better by now. For those who still love the original Borat, Subsequent Moviefilm does a fine job of capturing what made Cohen’s comedy so exciting and outrageous in the first place. The film’s climax is definitely going to get people talking, but I hope it doesn’t overshadow some A+ comedy that had me crying from laughing so hard. It’s not a great success, but it’s a pretty good success.

Rating: B

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

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