Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2020)
★★ — Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2020)
Lightning rarely strikes twice. That's the uncomfortable truth sitting at the heart of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, and no amount of fearless commitment from Sacha Baron Cohen can fully disguise it. I wanted to love this. I really did. But somewhere between the absurdist set-pieces and the political provocations, the whole thing started to feel like a very expensive tribute act to its own predecessor.
The problem isn't effort. Cohen throws himself at this material with the same reckless physical and emotional abandon that made the original so extraordinary. When I reviewed Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, I was genuinely bowled over by how it weaponised awkwardness and absurdity to expose something ugly and real about American culture. That film felt dangerous, unpredictable, like anything could happen. This one, for all its energy, feels managed. Calculated. You can sense the machinery behind the curtain.
Part of that is simply the passage of time. The world knows who Borat is now. The targets in the original were caught genuinely off guard, and that naivety was the whole point. Here, you're frequently left wondering how much of what you're watching is genuine reaction and how much has been shaped in the edit for maximum outrage rather than actual revelation. The satire loses its teeth when you're not sure if anyone's really being bitten.
Where the film does find something fresh is in Maria Bakalova's performance as Tutar, Borat's daughter. She's genuinely bold, often funny, and brings an unexpected warmth to what could easily have been a throwaway addition to the formula. The father-daughter dynamic gives the story a structural spine it otherwise lacks, and there are moments where it almost convinces you this sequel has a reason to exist beyond brand extension. Almost. The trouble is that the tenderness of their relationship keeps crashing into the crassness around it, and the tonal lurching gets exhausting. You can't ask an audience to care about a character's emotional journey in one scene and then assault them with lowbrow shock gags in the next without losing something along the way.
The political commentary, which should be the film's sharpest edge, ends up being its most scattered. It swings at targets both obvious and slightly random, never quite landing with the focused precision that made the first film feel genuinely subversive. There's a difference between satire and a highlights reel of provocations, and this sequel sometimes struggles to find that line. A few sequences do land, credit where it's due, but they're islands in a fairly choppy sea.
I don't want to be entirely dismissive. Brave in places, occasionally very funny, and Bakalova is a genuine discovery. But brave isn't the same as brilliant, and funny isn't the same as sharp. Compared to the audacity and cultural wallop of the original, this is a retread with diminishing returns, a sequel that confirms what many sequels confirm: that the element of surprise, once spent, is nearly impossible to buy back.
Two stars.
Rating: ★★ | Year: 2020 | Watched: 2025-09-26
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Physical: Amazon US
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Related on Movies With Macca
More with Sacha Baron Cohen: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
More from the 2020s: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · The Long Walk (2025) · Americana (2023)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
