Genre: Comedy
Premise: Borat comes back to America to improve relations with his country, Kazakstan. But when the stupid daughter he never knew he had hitches a ride, he’s forced to find a way to use her in the plan.
About: This was going to be released in theaters, but then when Covid came around, Amazon Prime bought it for 120 million dollars!
Writer: Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Dan Swimer, Peter Baynham, Erica Rivinoja, Dan Mazer, Jena Friedman, Lee Kern.
Details: 95 minutes
Between murder hornets, Kanye West saying his favorite Star Wars line is, “It’s over, Anakin, I have the high ground!” And the fact that I’m starting to see people wear Speedo goggles on the street, I feel like I’m losing my mind. So thank god we had some some genuine comedic entertainment this weekend.
BORAT!!!
Or should I say, BORAT’S DAUGHTER!
Is the actress who plays Borat’s daughter the biggest comedy find since Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids? Methinks yes.
And what’s with Borat using character arcs in his movies now? Am I living on another planet?
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm follows, well, Borat, 14 years after his last American adventure. His Kazakstan president hates his guts for embarrassing the nation but is willing to give him a reprieve. In an attempt to secure a friendship with America, the president wants Borat to deliver the most famous person in Kazakstan (who happens to be a monkey) to Donald Trump.
Borat heads to America but when the monkey crate arrives, the monkey is dead. Borat’s 15 year old daughter, Tutar, who wanted to be with her father, came here and ate him along the way because she was hungry. Borat wants nothing to do with his daughter because all women are second class citizens in his country, but she refuses to leave.
So he comes up with an idea. He’ll give Tutar to Donald Trump instead. Which is Tutar’s dream come true because all she wants is to live in a golden cage, just like Melania. When that plan fails, they go to Plan B. Give Tutar to Donald Trump’s best friend, Rudy Giuliani. But that means making her look pretty. So they give her a complete makeover.
In the process of meeting other Americans, Tutar starts to realize that, in America, women can be anything they want, and when she confronts Borat about this, he refuses to accept these ‘lies.’ What’s next? The Holocaust was real?? So Tutar runs away in pursuit of her new dream. To be a journalist. She’s able to pull some strings and get a big interview with Rudy Giuliani. But will it be enough to save her father from a beheading back home? We shall see!
First off, let me say that I laughed more during this movie than any comedy I’ve seen in a long time. The thing I’ve learned with comedy is that humor is often found in saying the things you’re not supposed to say. Like Bill Burr’s rant on white women hijacking the planet in his recent SNL stint. It was a risky bit but those are the avenues you have to be willing to go down if you’re going to make people laugh. They won’t always work. But they’re better than the safe middle-of-the-road “comedy” late night hosts spew.
Well, Borat takes that premise and changes “say” to “do.” He does the things you’re not supposed to do. There is a father-daughter dance at an upscale ball where the daughter informs Borat that she’s having her period and he says, that’s fine, we need to do the dance anyway. And let’s just say what we see next is both horrifying and hilarious all at once.
The scene where Borat goes to buy a cage for his daughter and openly talks to the salesman about making sure an average sized woman can fit in there – that was hilarious. When Tutar stays with a babysitter and the babysitter drives her into town and Tutar starts having a panic attack because “it’s impossible for women to drive!” Then the whole special Kazakstan book for girls that explains that if your hand gets anywhere near your vagina, your vagina will bite it off. Complete with detailed drawings. It was all so wrong yet so hilarious.
You could tell that something happened during the filming that messed the story up though. It was probably Covid. But it might have been that they couldn’t get a few of the people they wanted on-camera. Because, the next thing we know, Tutar is interviewing Rudy Giuliani and she’s a completely different person. She’s not acting at all like she was before in the movie. She’s got a different accent. A different demeanor. We’re not clear what the interview is about or how she was able to secure it.
And then there’s the talked about moment where, after the interview, Giuliani lays down on the bed supposedly to remove his microphone but some people are saying it was to masturbate. I don’t know. I was expecting a lot more after all the online talk. But I’ve seen enough reality TV to know there was a ton of audio snipping going on. They were clearly muting parts of the conversation that would’ve given more context to what was happening. And once you do that, I can’t trust that what you’re showing me is accurate.
Either way, Borat 2 is hilarious. Of all these former comedy characters who try to come back after a long time (Dumb and Dumber, Bill and Ted), Borat runs laps around them. It doesn’t catch the lightning-in-a-bottle perfection of the first film. But the daughter was so freaking good that she, alone, elevated this into a must-see film. Imagine trying to match, line for line, one of the greatest comedy characters ever created. As a nobody actress!! That’s insane. Yet she pulls it off.
What did you guys think?
[ ] It was great! NOOOOTTT.
[ ] This is Urkin, the town rapist. Naughty, naughty!
[xx] niiice
[ ] very niiiice
[ ] My wife is dead? High Five!!!
What I learned: What Borat Subsequent Moviefilm taught me is to not worry about writing funny. Don’t worry about writing funny moments. Don’t worry about writing funny dialogue. Worry about WRITING FUNNY CHARACTERS. If you write funny characters, they will naturally say funny things. They will naturally find themselves in funny situations. That’s what we had here with Borat and Tutar. After you come up with them, the funny writes itself.
