PLOT: Over twenty years after his HBO show came to an end, Ali G (Sacha Baron Cohen), with his pregnant girlfriend Julie in tow, tries to make a comeback, only to find the culture has changed.
REVIEW: Younger readers in North America may not be aware, but before Borat broke out in a big way, Sacha Baron Cohen was already a household name in the UK for his character Ali G. By now, I’d wager stateside audiences know who he is, but with the exception of his HBO show, the character was never quite the phenomenon here that he was there. Yet, given how fractured the culture has become, there is something irresistible about bringing back such a wild caricature, who’s so silly it’s hard to believe anyone could take genuine offence. The movie has been met with a certain degree of backlash, but I have to wonder how much of it is marketing and how much is genuine, as the character almost seems tame now—always silly but good-hearted and well-intentioned.
Unlike his other movie with the character, Ali G Indahouse, which was a standard comedy, this new Ali G movie adopts the style of his HBO series and later work, including his two Borat movies, Brüno, and, most notably, his short-lived Who Is America? series. It’s all about catching gullible people who are so committed to their own ideologies that they can be convinced of literally anything—including participating in several major crimes staged for the film, with constant on-screen reminders that the people themselves don’t know it’s all fake.
The film is tied together by an admittedly thin premise. Twenty years after his HBO show was cancelled, Ali G is broke, and his girlfriend is pregnant. Mistakenly believing that HBO wants him for another season, he flies to California with Julie (now played by Morgana Robinson) in tow, where he becomes an influencer. This puts him in the crosshairs of another of Cohen’s creations, ultra-liberal Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello, who wants to cancel Ali G because of cultural appropriation. He’s assisted by yet another Who Is America? character, Erran Morad (of the Mossad), also played by Cohen. They interact all the time through the use of very fake-looking body doubles, which are intentionally awful so that Cohen can further illustrate just how idiotic some of his subjects are.
Cohen, who also directed, is an equal-opportunity offender. He does his best to ridicule both the extreme left and right. He’s able to convince some left-wing people he recruits to essentially carry out what could be called a (fake) sexual assault on Ali G, and to convince them that even the act of nodding your head is ableist. He also mocks Ali G’s critics by having Nira try to convince a Black town hall audience that Ali G is guilty of cultural appropriation, only for the crowd to dismiss him—as does a Black DEI coach who actually seems to find the whole thing kind of funny.
These parts of the movie are actually quite amusing, and it was a unique feeling to once again laugh in a movie theater, as comedies nowadays are few and far between. Yet, like a lot of Cohen’s movies, it runs out of gas in the final half hour, even if this is the part of the movie that’s meant to be the most explosive. Here, Morad manages to convince some alt-right wingers, including a former pastor (rightly excommunicated, it seems) and low-grade politicians, to participate in an increasingly outlandish plot, which eventually involves kidnapping and even the attempted murder of an infant—all of it staged, of course. At this point, it felt hard to believe that the people Cohen’s exposing on screen weren’t in on the joke. They seem so stupid it’s hard to believe they could have made it this far in life, especially given how outrageously fake-looking the whole plot is. Then again, who knows? Cohen has a knack for getting people to do crazy things, and the stuff he has people do in the finale is wild, even for him, as he has them actually breaking serious laws, even if it’s all staged.
Of course, the message is that people get so caught up in their own ideology and beliefs that, if you manipulate them in the right way, you can make them do virtually anything. It’s a provocative idea, although, again, Ali G: Who Iz I feels more scripted than the Borat films did, perhaps because in those films he didn’t go as far as he does here. Whatever the case, I did laugh consistently during the movie, although I’d wager most audiences will see this on streaming, as Amazon/MGM is giving it a very limited one-week run, with many theaters only playing it once a day. Cohen is still funny and has a knack for finding people willing to utterly humiliate themselves, and the fact that he’s been able to do so for over twenty years now continues to amaze.
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