Borat Subsequent Moviefilm movie review (2020)

Q-Anon comes in for special ridicule by the film, and it's quite pointed: the cult's followers (represented by a couple of survivalist-types that Borat briefly stays with when he's estranged from Tutar) agree with Borat that the Democrats are "demons" and the Clintons are "evil" exploiters, yet they gladly help Borat in his odyssey to deliver his daughter as a carnal prize to a member of the Trump administration. Borat's explanations of his own troubles are dismissed as "a conspiracy theory" by men who believe that a secret, quasi-vampiric cult (a modern gloss on the ancient blood libel) controls the levers of power. The threat of state-approved murder hangs over Borat throughout, thanks to his government's pledge to dismember him should his mission fail. But when Borat performs a song written by his two new buddies at a fair, the audience eagerly sings along with his lyrics about how Covid is "The Wuhan Flu" and the US should chop up journalists "like the Saudis do." 

The movie's scripted fiction mirrors the reality that the star captures when interacting with nonprofessionals: there is no agreed-upon morality, ethical code, or national fellowship in America. There is only greed, tribal loyalty, and power dynamics. Maybe that's all there ever was. This is a dark, dark movie, invigorating in its bleakness.

Cohen "retired" Borat in 2007, saying that his disguise-driven brand of satire had become impossible due to his own fame and the instantaneous, identity-checking ability of search engines. And yet here he is fourteen years later, releasing a follow-up that was shot (mostly) under the radar during a pandemic. Some early scenes account for Cohen's inability to work incognito in public: Borat, aka Cohen-in-character, gets recognized by random pedestrians, but their chasing and pestering him for autographs is chalked up to Borat's infamy.

This launches a gallery of disguises that are like something Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau would've worn to fool the bad guys, only to arouse a different sort of suspicion. There's a Soggy Bottom Boys-looking "hillbilly" outfit; a Donald Trump disguise that involves a fat suit and a "Mission: Impossible"-caliber face mask and hairpiece; and a "Jew" costume (drawing on Borat's own country's history of antisemitism) with bat wings, talons, and a Pinocchio schnoz.

As you've gathered ("gathered"—like you'd be reading this if you weren't already a Borat fan!) much of the humor is deliberately provocative/offensive/filthy, and while the script has a theoretically progressive agenda (as in Cohen's TV series, and the last Borat film, the hero's misadventures are meant to expose latent American bigotry, depravity, bloodlust, and authoritarianism), the result risks accusations that the creators are trying to eat their cake and have it, too. Is Cohen wallowing in American dysfunction by giving it so much screen time, even as he's putting ironic quote-marks around Borat's in-character "agreement" with it? Is he inadvertently creating YouTube clips and memes that bigots can strip of irony and self-awareness, and fold into the same old rancid propaganda? How responsible is Cohen for unintended consequences?