Film Review “Borat Post Movie”: “Åherreguuud!” – humor is alive – VG

COMEDY

“Borat påfølgende film” (“Borat post-film: Lavish bribery handed over to the American regime to once benefit the glorious nation of Kazakhstan”)

Premiere Friday, October 23 on Amazon Prime

UNITED STATES. 15 years. Directed by: Jason Woliner

Med: Sacha Baron Cohen, Maria Bakalova

It once happened that the undersigned literally fell out of a movie seat during a fit of laughter. That’s when I saw “Borat” in a London cinema 14 years ago. I don’t remember what scene it was that caused this loss of dignity. He was, to tell the truth, quite drunk.

The creation of Sacha Baron Cohen quickly became a phenomenon in culture: a furious anti-Semitic “journalist” from the supposedly extremely backward Kazakhstan, unleashed among equally backward Americans. So ubiquitous was Borat that he just as quickly became quite bored. The Outdated Suit! The iridescent green swimsuit! The word “sexytime”!

I haven’t seen the movie since and have no idea how it is. He also didn’t expect Baron Cohen to revive the character. But hey. A lot of strange things have happened in the United States since last time. Not least in the last four years.

Borat bites stones in a gulag camp as the dishonorable and unfair “after-movie of Borat” begins after bringing shame to his country. However, he will soon be aboard a ship bound for the United States. Mission: Present a monkey, Johnny the Monkey, the Minister of Culture of Kazakhstan and the most famous porn star, to Vice President Michael “Mike” Pence, the leading “womanizer” of North America. So irresistible to women that you can’t be alone in a room with them.

The dynamics is the same as in the previous movie. After an excellent introduction where verbal and visual jokes (at the expense of Kazakhstan) come close, it is the embarrassing humor, captured with a hidden camera, that takes over when Borat finally reaches the Promised Land and its people.

This time she also has a pixie in charge: the 15-year-old daughter Tutar (Bakalova). Borat places her in a cage. It is far from as golden as Melania Trumps. But everyone has to start somewhere.

The state of Texas is the first victim, followed by Georgia. They get an unspoken pastry chef to write an anti-Semitic salute on a chocolate cake. Borat enters a Republican congress wearing a full Ku Klux Klan outfit. Later, he talks to some old women in a synagogue who are wearing the least subtle “Jewish dress” in the world. “We control the weather very good,” he says.

There is much more, that I will not do spoil here. Just a few keywords: Menstruation. Abortion Tom Hanks. Country music and opponents control infections. As many will see: Rudy Giuliani. I once thought, “Please no.” And fortunately it was not.

Baron Cohen and Bakalova play extremely harshly and cynically on the superficial kindness and service attitude of Americans. The payoff is that the poor are stark naked, ridiculed by a whole world. It is a hard medicine and it is not difficult to find ethical problems in the procedure. The Americans let Borat and Tutur into their homes. Borat and Tutur are pissed off at his hospitality.

It would have been bad, and completely impossible to watch, if it hadn’t been for the purpose: to combat prejudice, racism, sexism, and idiotic superstition, old and new. Do you slam the doors open? Well obviously they are not open to everyone. Critical voices will point out that Baron Cohen is also prejudiced against Kazakhs. They want a point. But you can’t do satire without breaking some eggs.

“Borat’s later movie” has its long ears, where you sit and wonder who is more or less involved in the joke and not. My advice is that the two rednecks and Tutar’s nanny know what they’re doing. Rudy Giuliani definitely doesn’t know.

Baron Cohen’s progressive antics humor, shocking and obnoxious as it usually is, fits in well with an era of steep fronts and a weak-minded climate of debate. The Bulgarian bakalova is a he found, at least as contemptuously brave as he is.

I laughed, hard and many times. He put his hand over his mouth and gasped “fuck!” He did not fall out of the chair. But it may have been because he was lying on a couch and sober.