One of the more pleasant surprises to come out of 2020 was Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, a belated sequel to Borat that saw Sacha Baron Cohen’s comic creation returning to America to gift his teenage daughter to Mike Pence, only for his plans to be foiled by the spread of COVID-19.
Unlike most comedy sequels, the Borat follow-up satisfied fans of the original and was met with critical acclaim. It’s a great movie, but the first one is still arguably the best.
Subsequent Moviefilm Is Great: Borat Is Even More Relevant In 2020
The idea behind the Borat character is to present Americans with a wacky foreigner whose unabashed bigotry against women, the Jewish, and the Romani brings out their own prejudices. When Borat tells a rodeo cowboy that gay people are executed in Kazakhstan, the cowboy feels comfortable telling him that he believes the same thing should be done in America.
Back in 2006, the first Borat movie captured Bush-era America perfectly, but by 2020, in the age of Trump and QAnon and anti-maskers, a character that exposes ignorance had become even more relevant.
The First One Is Still Better: It’s Proven To Be Timeless
The release of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm inspired a lot of viewers to revisit the original movie, and most found that it had aged surprisingly well for a 14-year-old comedy whose main comedic currency is cultural ignorance. The first Borat movie has proven to be a timeless classic.
With its specific focus on the coronavirus pandemic and the 2020 presidential election race, Subsequent Moviefilm might not play as well in 2034 as the first movie did 14 years after its release.
Subsequent Moviefilm Is Great: The Self-Awareness Adds An Interesting New Angle
The problem with a lot of comedy sequels is that they just rehash all the jokes from the first one. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm distinguishes itself from the first one by adding meta layers to Sacha Baron Cohen’s performance.
He considered retiring the character after the success of the first movie, because Borat had become too recognizable, and this problem was incorporated into the Borat universe in the sequel as the character had to disguise himself to conduct interviews.
The First One Is Still Better: It’s More Of A Social Experiment
Based on the “NOW VOTE” message at the end of the movie, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm had the specific goal of exposing important information that would influence voters in the U.S. election. The first movie is more vaguely defined in its politics. It’s a movie with its own story structure and character development, but it’s more of a social experiment to see how different people will react to a character like Borat.
It’s not about making people look bad; whether the interviewees come out looking good, like the driving instructor who teaches Borat about consent, or bad, like the drunken frat boys who teach Borat about White Supremacy, is up to them.
Subsequent Moviefilm Is Great: The “Wuhan Flu” Song Is Genius
When Borat moves in with a couple of QAnon guys to ride out the coronavirus quarantine, they write a song about the virus being “a liberal hoax.” Then, at a far-right rally, he performs the song.
Seeing how many people at the rally sing along with lines like, “Inject him with the Wuhan flu,” and “Chop him up like the Saudis do,” in relation to figures like Obama and Dr. Fauci, is shocking and outrageous in the way that Sacha Baron Cohen’s comedy is at its best.
The First One Is Still Better: It’s Tighter
In addition to being more than 10 minutes longer than the first movie, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm has long stretches with more exposition than laughs.
The first Borat movie is one of the tightest comedies ever produced. There’s a big laugh every couple of seconds and everything that isn’t A-material was shaved off in the cutting room. It’s a movie that always plays really well with a huge audience.
Subsequent Moviefilm Is Great: Sacha Baron Cohen’s Ability To Never Break Character Is Impeccable
From Da Ali G Show to Who is America?, Sacha Baron Cohen has been tricking people into exposing their worst selves on camera for years now. The characters themselves are ingenious creations, and the scenarios he puts them in result in razor-sharp satire, but his most uncanny ability is the ability to never break character, no matter what his interviewees throw at him or how drastically out of hand a situation gets.
In Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Baron Cohen manages to do all of that while simultaneously playing a character playing a character. He hides Borat’s recognizable traits in unrecognizable new characters and his subjects are none the wiser, but it’s clear as day to the viewer. It’s really impeccable.
The First One Is Still Better: A Looser Plot Resulted In Better Pranks
One of the biggest differences between the first and second Borat movies is that the second one has a much more rigid plot. The first one loosely follows Borat’s road trip across the U.S. to marry Pamela Anderson, but the second one has the goal of delivering Tutar to Mike Pence and the stakes that Borat will be killed if he fails.
This meant that a lot of the pranks had to facilitate plot points in addition to duping unwitting Americans. In the first movie, that was always the priority, and it resulted in better pranks.
Subsequent Moviefilm Is Great: Maria Bakalova Is Incredible
Usually, when Sacha Baron Cohen’s mockumentaries have a co-star, they’re a deadpan foil for his wacky characters, like Gustaf Hammarsten as Lutz in Brüno. But for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, he found his match in Maria Bakalova.
From getting Rudy Giuliani to fumble around in his pants to preaching the joys of masturbation to a Hillsborough Republican Women’s Club meeting, Bakalova is every bit the master prankster that Baron Cohen is.
The First One Is Still Better: It Was A Game-Changer
With an unprecedented worldwide box office haul of more than $260 million, Borat turned out to be a surprise blockbuster back in 2006. The best lines were quoted by audiences for years to come. The success of Borat contributed to changing the face of comedy in the mid-2000s.
The sequel made a huge splash last year with its ultra-relevant satirical targets and viral moments like the Giuliani interview, but it was nowhere near the cultural phenomenon of the first one.