To go back to the earlier film in the Borat series-Yaadon Ki Borat, we may call it-in 2006, actor-performer-comedian Sacha Baron Cohen had first played the Kazakh journalist who travels through the American heartland to try and understand how the American Dream works. It was a sassy audacious attempt at juicing America’s sexism and racism for all it was worth in mirth.
The second part of the Borat series, like Mirzapur 2 is more of the same. More of Cohen’s hilarious Kazakh accent (I’ve never met a Kazakh, so I wouldn’t know if Cohen is doing a Peter Sellers or a Meryl Streep), more of his Crocodile Dundee antics, and more crudity, a lot more. Some of it has to do with the female private party and it is not funny to anyone who has any sense of decency.
What was Sacha Baron Cohen thinking? Borat 2 is a father-daughter story and the vaginal jokes have a deliberately incestuous feel to them. I wonder why such witless adult humour was allowed. It ruins the film’s otherwise-amusing attempts to take spiky jibes at the Trump administration particularly his Vice President Mike Pence to whom Sacha’s Baron wants to ‘gift’ his 15-year old daughter.
How much more politically incorrect can it get? A lot more, trust me on that! The actual humour of Borat 2 comes from the same source as the first film. Sacha Cohen in character as Borat places hidden cameras to record the reaction of god-fearing well-meaning Americans to Borat’s cultural dubiety. So we get decent Americans being assailed by Borat’s indecent queries. Now, this is funny!
In one sequence Borat takes his daughter to get a plastic babydoll removed from her belly which she swallowed with cake. A pastor at the abortion clinic is on to another trip altogether when Borat tells him he wants to remove “baby that I pooot in my zaughter’s biely” (excuse my Kazakh accent). Later at a fund-raising seminar, the daughter freaks out the old American wholesome ladies by talking about the various uses of the female private part. Not all reproductive.
The reactions of the women are priceless as they do not know they are being filmed, and that the 15-year of Kazakh girl championing vaginal liberty is an actress. Sacha Baron Cohen feels Maria Bakalova who plays his daughter deserves, an Oscar. Don’t mind him. We all know he’s prone to humongous excesses.
Directed by Jason Woliner Borat Subsequent Moviefilm Gets 2 stars.
Image source: IMDb