This movie plods along nicely, but like I've said with a few films I've watched recently, it never goes beyond that or gets too exciting. There is nothing too surprising along the way. Clint is great as a bumbling person as he's put in uncomfortable situations and offers a number of laughs.
Borat and Sacha's other two outlandish characters were funny because of the chaos created. Here though, even Sacha can't help himself and it gets political in a time where it's unfortunately inescapable.
This is nowhere near as clever or funny as the original. The wik page features this - "praise from critics for its commentary on American culture." Yeah, right... With 'Who Is America?' Sacha poked fun at some of the ideals of the lunatics on both sides-the far right and far left. Here it's all one way with many of the same lazy themes being featured. I mean, a Christian is pro-life? What a surprise... In an interview to promote the film, he surprisingly said he wanted to address both sides, but when did he do this? Trudeau was flashed up for a second with paint on his face... That's about it.
As expected, Borat's celebrity limits the amount of hilarious interactions that he can have with unsuspecting public compared to 2006 and this does reduce the enjoyment of the movie. Therefore, the pranks he is involved in aren't very frequent. Instead his on-screen daughter is the centrepiece of many of them or it's Borat in costume. Many of Borat's famous phrases aren't even featured. I did enjoy the twist at the end of the movie, and it's still worth watching if you are a fan, but from someone who has seen everything his three famous characters have been involved in, much of this isn't breaking new ground.
[Spoilers]
The main 'pranks' (I don't know what was unscripted at the time of writing this):
-Nothing came of Borat in a Trump mask rushing the republican convention as Mike Pence was speaking making it feel pointless and fairly unfunny. Not worth the hours and hours it took for him to prepare for it.
-The Rudi Guilliani interview was weird the way they were flirting back and forth but with that young woman, who wouldn't? What is odd is that he doesn't suspect anything. He must have an ego the size of a planet. Since this has come to light, his excuses about this don't seem honest.
-The 'sexual awakening' of Tutar Sagdiyeva in the conservative women's meeting was okay, but I thought that in any room full of middle-aged women they probably would've got the same response. Why'd that have to be a conservative meeting?
-The Jewish women in the synagogue were wonderful and therefore didn't react as maybe Sacha wanted or the viewer would expect. (Apparently Sacha broke character to inform them about the film at some point).
-The father-daughter menstruating dance at the debutante ball (why do these still exist?) was worth it just for the reactions of the onlookers.
I've always liked Gervais' comedy but I felt like I'd heard a lot of this before. His jokes where the punchline is rape, a disabled kid, or turning around from sounding like he thinks the amount of homeless people are a blight on society, from an egalitarianism stand-point, to them just being horrible and the need to get rid of them, all felt recycled. His story of calling his mum and pretending to be blind is from his podcast/radio show with Steve Merchant and Karl Pilkington from a long time ago. It's not unenjoyable, but he needs to write some more original jokes.
Before watching this, from some reviews and seeing the reception it received, I thought it would be full of anti-woke content, and while he starts and ends with it, and his jokes aren't what would be considered PC or 'woke', it's not a constant theme or what Ricky talks about. He ends by saying something like if woke is caring about equality then I'm woke, but if it's trying to get people fired for a joke then I'm not. And unfortunately that's where we're at in the current age. Other points from Ricky, like those about clowns having an issue when an actor plays an identity that isn't them, are spot on, but it isn't exactly something that hasn't been said before.
