Premise: In an attempt to regain his former stature in Kazakhstan, Borat goes on a mission in America to win the favor of Michael Pence.
When you factor in the general popularity of it, the original Borat in 2006 is one of my least favorite movies of all time. I didn't find it that clever or revelatory. I despise that kind of comedy. It's punching down. The joke is that Sacha Baron Cohen acts like an asshole, and people who didn't sign up for this react in ways that we laugh at. It's not that I dislike this for any moralistic reason. I just don't think it takes any skill to do this kind of comedy. That movie would've just been bad and forgettable, but then I had to deal with the whole country losing their damn mind over it. The quoting was insufferable. I wanted to punch every person who said "It really shines a light on American society". If you needed that movie to realize this stuff, then I pity you. Also, the lesson you actually learn in most of these situations is that if a crazy person starts doing things (often with a camera crew), regular people will humor him rather than engage in a discussion to correct him. Seriously, I just despise this movie and all the people who praised it.
And now I've watched the sequel. I'm that starved for new content. I 've seen one new movie in a theater in 8 months. The schedule of big new releases has been virtually wiped out through the end of the year. Borat 2 was a movie people were talking about. So, I watched it. Anyway, with movies, I take the stance that I can't dislike something if I haven't given it a chance. Besides, maybe...perhaps I'd...like it?
"Like it" is going a bit far, but I did find Borat 2 to be a vast improvement over the original. I mean, I still hated all the comedy. I sort of chuckled once or twice at a couple set ups for scenes, but that was the extent of it. I still deeply dislike all the prank humor. However, I was genuinely impressed with how generous the movie was at times. By far, the best scenes weren't the funny ones. They were the generous ones. The scene with the old woman who was a Holocaust survivor was lovely. The scenes with the babysitter were surprisingly sweet. Bizarrely, even the helpfulness of the QAnon guys was nice. Weirdly, I came away from this feeling better about people. At least, better about some people.
The big improvement of this movie is the addition of Borat's daughter, Tutar (Maria Bakalova). Where the first movie was just about coming up with scenarios to expose unsavory parts of American life, the sequel has this father-daughter relationship as the backbone. And it's...sweet. Between all the dumb pranks, there's a nice story about a father coming to appreciate and bond with a daughter he never wanted. It kept me interested through the parts I hated. And, while I don't find Sacha Baron Cohen's form of prank humor funny, I do respect the ballsiness of some of the situations he puts himself in and his ability to play it all straight. He's had decades of experience doing this. Bakalova is just 24 with no history of these kind of pranks, yet she manages to match Cohen throughout the movie. I don't want to overstate how good she is in the movie, but I'm certainly hopeful that she'll turn up in more non-Borat movies in the future.
Given how much I hate the first movie, the fact that I only mildly disliked this movie is one of the more pleasant surprises of 2020.
Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend
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