Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Review)
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Review)
11/1/20
DISCLAIMER: This review will not contain any major spoilers for "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm" past two paragraphs in. The rest of the review does not include major spoilers, but does encapsulate how things went without going into a lot of detail. The movie does not contain any major direct spoilers that aren't given away within the first thirty minutes (mainly just the general plot).
It's not completely radical to assume you've heard of Sacha Baron Cohen's first "Borat" movie from 2006. It was a wild roller-coaster of controversy and got itself banned in two countries. The movie is a comedy and mockumentary that follows Borat Sagdiyev; a Kazakh reporter making a documentary studying what makes America so "great". Eventually, he discovers Pamela Anderson and aims to make her his wife; offending every ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, and country along the way. The movie is something of a masterpiece, and many consider it a highly popular cult classic. For the sake of this review, we can use this terminology to compare "Borat" to "Zombieland"; another highly popular cult classic. The reason for this particular comparison is because of "Zombieland" getting a sequel last October: "Zombieland: Double Tap". This was probably the first sequel I saw after a cult classic I really loved, and it was somewhat disappointing. A decent outing, for sure, with some great jokes thrown in, but definitely nothing special. The tricky part of all of this is companies trying not to disrespect a film's legacy. With cult classics like "Borat" and "Zombieland" having a loving fanbase who might be so hyped for a sequel, that sequel can not be bad, and god forbid it be disrespectful. Now with the stakes heightened, let's find my opinions on whether the new movie "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm" live up to its hype or not.
The first thing that was somewhat strange about this movie was its marketing. The movie was first announced on October 1st; just over three weeks before its release. Many new things have been announced far closer to release now due to the coronavirus, but with a movie this big and important, I would not have expected this at all. There are two reasons this may have happened, however, and the first one is because of streaming services like Netflix announcing movies and TV shows weeks before their releases as well. The second being that, from the looks of the first trailer, it was somewhat hard to put a trailer for this movie together. Personally, I think the trailer should be a fair amount shorter, and I don't like how the new trailer spoils a lot of the movies great jokes. The new one is over three minutes long, which is a little much for this movie. There was also some more promotion, like the character of Borat going on talk shows, but not much else. The trailers received mostly positive reviews, (I hadn't watched one until just now), but some fans showed their outrage with some dislikes on the YouTube videos. Nevertheless, the movie is out now, so the real question is how good it actually came out.
Starting with the negatives, it's sort of hard to have any real gripes with this movie. If it's up to personal taste, however, I do have a select few that might be worth going over. The first gripe was the ending, and it did indeed go a little too fast. This seems to happen with a lot of movies within this respective length; perhaps they were restricted from going any further, so they had to cut the ending down. Or maybe its writers just did not want to give the movie a proper send off. However, the ending of the movie still managed to be funny and great. The ending did serve the rest of the movie justice, but it did just feel slightly rushed. The second major one is the movie's predictability. The movie is about a father-daughter relationship, and after around thirty minutes, you can see exactly where the movie was headed in this respect. However, the movie does throw some insane controversy and jokes in the viewer's way that help obscure the predictability of the main overarching plot. Without going into too much detail, the movie is predictable, but it has a lot of other parts that counter it. Nothing other than the main key plot arc elements are predictable. The final, more minor gripe I have here is that some of the jokes are not that funny at the time, but almost everyone except for these select few hit great.
There aren't many good things to say about this movie, because they all play so clearly in the first movie and in the trailers. It's certainly another "Borat" movie, which is precisely what makes it so good. The comedy is pristine, the actors do amazing, and even the wide array of cast who weren't in on the joke did great as well. The one thing I feel is worth going into a lot of detail about this movie is its controversy. Aside from its few minor bad elements, "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm" is about the most positive definition of "shit-storm" there is. Controversy flies through the screen into your ears and eyes constantly, and every disrespectful joke shocks you just the same; if not more each time. The movie hasn't quit shocking me with its controversy, though, because almost every day now if I search for this movie I'll find some cast member who didn't know the movie was a comedy or some joke involving people I thought were actors but weren't at all. A movie still surprising its viewer from the outside is something nothing has perfected as well as the "Borat" series. I can proudly say the sheer amount of controversy and disrespect carries over very well here.
If anyone reading this remembers Sacha Baron Cohen's more recent 2018 show "Who is America?", this movie is sort of like it in a lot of ways, but it was a bit more toned-down and did follow an actual plot. The terms of "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm" living up to the original are completely subjective, but personally, I think this new movie is still great no matter how great the original was. Generally, I am not one at all for this recent wave of Hollywood sequels that rudely profit off nostalgia and old fanbases in favor of creating new and original ideas. However, this movie brought a lot of new and original ideas to the table, and made for a truly amazing sequel. In conclusion, I recommend this film to anyone who watched the first one, and anyone completely new to the franchise. I would of course recommend that you watch the first movie before this, but it's perfectly fine if you don't because there aren't any key plot elements the movie makes you have to know to enjoy much of it at all. If you make a sequel fourteen years later, it's purpose is usually more focused around introducing the franchise to a new audience, which this film does really well. Giving this movie a 1-10 using half numbers, I give this movie an 8.5/10 with a five-word description of: "the only great recent sequel".
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