After Sacha Baron Cohen left audiences quoting lines and laughing about a mockumentary called Borat fourteen years ago, the satirical foreign reporter marked his grand return in the back half of 2020 with Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. Comedian and actor, Sacha Baron Cohen, showed Borat to audiences as a way to observe and expose the types of people that lived in America back in 2006. The success was built on a formula for comedy that relies on him making a fool of himself as an intentionally underwritten and vaguely-foreign character while regular people, not paid actors, react and interact with him on camera. The film was held together by a purposefully thin plot involving Pamela Anderson, but it was clear to most that the intention of the film was not just to laugh at, but also to expose much of the underlying bigotry that can come from Americans. Baron Cohen dons the cheap suit and wacky mustache again in 2020. With free speech becoming an ever debated and possibly manipulated topic, many ignorant and downright hateful people have come out of hiding and found solace in the United States. Borat returns to laugh at them all once again. 

Along with being a highly anticipated sequel among fans of the first outing, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm made the national news with its inclusion of President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. The film depicts an uncomfortable event that took place in which Giuliani is interviewed by 24 year old co-star Maria Bakalova (playing Borat’s teenage daughter posed as a journalist), until the scene takes a turn. The atmosphere of the scene paints them as supposedly in a private setting, and Giuliani begins to lean back on a hotel bed and reach into his pants, until he learns he was profusely baited by Sacha Baron Coen, as he jumps out of the closet exclaiming how he’ll stand in his daughters place. The scene, of course, goes in line with the main thesis of Borat as a source of comedic media, in which the genuine reactions of real Americans provide the content, whether it be amusing, scary, or refreshing. The film is littered with scenes of citizens that, while shocking, did not come close to the absolute buffoonery that was displayed by one of the leading men in the White House. Giuliani responded on October 21, two days before the film’s digital release, stating on Twitter that “The Borat video was a complete fabrication. I was tucking in my shirt after taking off the recording equipment.” He followed that with the claim, “At no time before, during, or after the interview was I ever inappropriate. If Sacha Baron Cohen implies otherwise he is a stone-cold liar.” Giuliani claimed that this was a ruse meant to diminish his credibility in his efforts to expose the Biden family’s criminal background. A day after the response, Baron Cohen took to Twitter and TikTok in the persona of Borat, and mockingly defended Giuliani, describing in his appropriately broken english that “what was an innocent, sexy-time encounter between a consenting man and my fifteen year old daughter have been turned into something disgusting by fake news media.” Baron Cohen also got the chance to respond as himself on Good Morning America, in which he reinforces the White House’s attorneys immaturity, and references that if Rudy Giuliani “found what he did there appropriate behavior, then heaven knows what he’s done with other female journalists in hotel rooms.”

Sacha Baron Cohen, along with Maria Bakalova, dared to pull some truly terrifying stunts across the country, including having Borat live with conspiracy theorists as they deny scientific evidence right in the middle of COVID-19 lockdowns, or writing and performing a song encapsulating white America’s bigotry in the middle of a right wing rally, crawling with men carrying guns, confederate flags, and some doing salutes to the Nazi party. The most notable stunt came during a press conference given by Vice President Michael Pence, in which Borat, in a Donald Trump costume, barged into the giant room filled with conservatives, carrying a woman on his back, shouting about how he would offer a woman to him for the benefit of his home country. While there was surprisingly little to no legal action taken against the filmmakers, this event was heavily marketed during the film’s promotion. Now that the film has been released, many have taken more interest in some of the sweeter aspects of the film, including a story involving Jeanise Jones, a babysitter that Borat hires to take care of his teenage daughter, Tutar. Jeanise brought some surprisingly genuine and real advice to Tutar, who rivals Borat himself with her own absurdity. Then, after watching the film, viewers discovered Jones in her normal life in which she was unemployed, but she left such a resonation that a crowdfund had begun in order to help her out. The crowdfund goal was $100,000 which was met and currently sits at around $178,000. Another surprisingly warm-hearted event in the film took place inside of a synagogue, in which Baron Cohen’s goal was to poke fun at Borat’s and maybe some viewers anti-semitism, until he was met with two nice old Jewish ladies, one being a Holocaust survivor. Judith Dim Evans, the survivor, provided more love and understanding when talking to Borat, which caused Sacha Baron Cohen to break his rules and tell Evans off camera that this was for a satire and he was Jewish himself. While the controversial moments are what got people really talking about Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, the genuine moments kept viewers interested after the film was over.