«Borat 2»: everyone will love it, except the jerks

Cinema Wednesdays - Danilo Heyer

Borat 2, the suite of Borat (2006), was released on October 23 on the Prime Video platform. Sacha Baron Cohen takes on the role of Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev, for another trip to America, but this time swaps the company of his obese sidekick Azamat Bagatov for that of his daughter, offering up some zany new situations. Is it worth seeing? Definitely.

This second installment is just as funny as it is a good sequel. While it’s true that any new installment must stay true to its characters and preserve the essence of what made the first films so charming—while still offering something new—, Borat 2 is very well executed. Although there may be fewer punchlines Memorable as it is, the movie itself really makes us laugh. It uses the same blend of fiction and reality—and, above all, the same sense of humor. Borat 2, as South Park, having realized that a good joke is always at someone’s expense, cheerfully takes jabs at everyone without distinction: Muslims, Kazakhs, Jews, conspiracy theorists, alt-right, etc., and, by that very fact, plays with nuance. Let's just say, Borat and South Park will forever remain excellent antidotes to the puritanical approach to humor that is deeply entrenched in certain countries, such as France, where they could never have come into being.

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The danger, for any work of this kind, remains the same: falling into clichés oneself while denouncing them. All that’s left, then, are trite jokes—ones we’ve heard a thousand times—always at the expense of the same people, and, ultimately, very artificial. Such a harmful approach is very similar to forcing a film to adhere to a few pre-selected themes. a priori, even if it means making the story and characters uninteresting, inconsistent with previous installments, and flat—much like Rian Johnson and his Star Wars VIII. By doing so, all we end up with is didactic cinema; we’re being lectured, and that doesn’t escape the attentive viewer. While the best way to avoid such a disaster in a dramatic film is to set aside learned concepts and ideas and focus solely on the plot and characters, in comedy, the goal is simply to make people laugh and leave the interpretation up to the viewer.

Sacha Baron Cohen is someone who has grasped the full significance of this truth, and while he himself might find meaning in the film—such as a critique of a slide toward authoritarianism— that would be only the most general interpretation of a work that, in its details and sketches, is in no way partisan. In short, Borat 2 is successful because it is authentic Borat, and because, even though he takes aim at everyone, his humor is genuine. No matter what your political leanings are—and unless you’re one of those humor philistines—there’s something for everyone.

Write to the author: danilo.heyer@leregardlibre.com

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