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"Borat 2: Subsequent Moviefilm"

 "Borat 2: Subsequent Moviefilm" (I imagine I'm getting the title wrong) concerns a monkey. 


The people of Kazakhstan have appointed a monkey to a high-ranking government post--and now, in a bid to earn Trump's attention, Borat must try to present the monkey (a gift) to Mike Pence.


However, Borat's fifteen-year-old daughter has ambitions; she wants to see America. (Borat seems surprised to discover that his daughter exists. And, at fifteen, she is "NOT MARRIED YET?" Borat faints.)


B's daughter smuggles herself in a crate with the aforementioned monkey, but, in transit, she gets hungry, and she eats the monkey. So Borat decides he will actually present his *daughter* to Pence, as a gift. The daughter has a makeover ("I feel like Melania!"), and further hijinks ensue. Everything builds to the Giuliani scene, which is uncomfortable and a bit mean, and also not the funniest part of the movie. (For me, the really memorable part involves Borat singing to a crowd of Trump supporters: "Barack Obama....What we gonna do? .....Shoot him up with the Wuhan flu.....")


It's exhilarating to see someone so rude and in-your-face, and the person playing B's daughter--Maria Bakalova--matches Sacha Baron Cohen in every scene. One point of art is to "defamiliarize," to get you to see "normal" things in a way. We live in a surreal country; we live somewhere in which it's plausible that a group would get together and express a wish to see Obama injected "with the Wuhan flu." SBC shocks us into recognizing--once again--how strange and troubling our era is.


(As Obama himself said, recently, about Trump: "Would you accept the pathological lies if Trump were a high-school principal? An accountant? You would not. You might have to tolerate the lies if Trump were your cousin, and you were hosting a family dinner--but you would talk about Trump afterward.....")


So: I'm recommending "Borat 2." A work of courage. Three stars.

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Comments

  1. Adolfo ProfumoOctober 29, 2020 at 5:45 AM

    A troubling gem indeed! I would also recommend "The Spy."

    ReplyDelete
  2. Adolfo ProfumoOctober 29, 2020 at 5:45 AM

    A troubling gem indeed! I would also recommend "The Spy."

    ReplyDelete
  3. ReaderOctober 29, 2020 at 6:15 AM

    Thank you! What a career he has.

    ReplyDelete

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