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From You can see everything has been released, you can practically hear every documentary filmmaker in the world gnashing their teeth. The film is not only an impressive examination of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and con artist behind Theranos, but a possible genre-bending, fourth-wall-breaking (in more ways than one) Oscar contender that has reinvigorated what nonfiction cinema can be. In just a few weeks, he has reshaped what audiences (and even studios) can expect from documentary film. Anyone who posts something in the following weeks You can see everything an arduous task awaits them.
But here we are, here is Sacha Baron Cohen. Six years later Later Borat film and 20 years later BoratCohen is back with another unscripted comedy. This time he’s rebooted Ali G, one of his characters from his long-ago HBO series, another racist, homophobic, idiotic jerk intended to skewer bigotry. Ali G, one of Cohen’s most popular characters, was a key part of his old show, a British DJ dressed in a durag and baggy tracksuits, speaking with a Blaccent and otherwise acting like an asshole. He’s Borat, but British, and he makes less reference to sleeping with his sister.
His new film, Ali G: Who am I?had a weekend theatrical release before arriving on Amazon Prime this week. That may seem like a pretty short window in theaters for a film with such a big star; after all, Cohen participated in a publicity blitz around the release, appearing on 60 minutes and on the cover of Time. “Yes, satire can offend people other than those targeted,” he wrote in an essay for the magazine. “As someone who has opposed bigotry and injustice throughout my life and associated with civil rights groups, I do not identify with the distorted portrayal of me that I sometimes see on social media, lumped in with the bigots I ridicule.” Cohen made intoxicating statements in the press Ali G: Who am I? about the value of comedy in a world that seems to appreciate it less and less. But then why is his new film so profoundly unfunny?
Well, maybe you’ll find it funny if you’re enchanted by the sight of Ali G in Rastacap pooping in front of a real estate agent. Or maybe you’ll be tickled by the sight of Rachel Dolezal as a talking head, or a briefly bamboozled Newt Gingrich. Do you think penises are funny? Oh, buddy: do I already have the movie for you.
The plot, such as it exists, begins with Ali G’s return to “the neighborhood”: his mother’s house in Staines-Upon-Thames, Surrey. HBO canceled his show, he’s broke, and his girlfriend is pregnant. The worst part is that he’s about to be canceled for acting stereotypically black, even though he clearly isn’t. Throughout the 90 minute film (about 45 minutes too long), he tries to track down his father to determine if he is a white man pretending to be black or if he is actually biracial. Meanwhile, Cohen as Ali G crosses paths with Cohen as other characters: Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello, a parody of left-wing keyboard warriors who greet a room of all black Oaklanders with “Namaste,” and Colonel Erran Morad, a former Mossad agent, which certainly begs you to consider Cohen’s presumed alignment with pro-Israel sentiment.
The film uses Cohen’s usual bag of tricks: forcing unsuspecting people to be in a room with him while he says more and more deranged things and, in some cases, becomes less and less dressed. But it has less of what made Borat — or HBO’s Ali G — compelling unscripted television. He’s not really trying to humiliate the people in power into an interview with an idiot. It’s now about deceiving people at the edges of the ideological spectrum, but without meaningful commentary. Cohen’s work has always worked best in the shadows, but now he and his characters are too famous not to be immediately noticed. What remains is actually not much; a film that thinks it breaks down barriers when in fact it mainly enforces them. You want me to laugh at the idea of a white man pretending to be black while Jack Harlow walks around for a while. free?
It’s almost as if Cohen wants credit for helping create some sort of unscripted format. The film begins with a reminder – in text form! – that there are only a few actual actors in the film, including Cohen. “Everyone in the movie is real,” says graffiti on a building at the beginning of the film, “and not playing the game.” Then there is a quote from Voltaire. Unbearable, especially from someone famous for wearing a neon one-piece swimsuit.
Ali G: Who am I? isn’t scandalous enough to draw you in out of sheer morbid curiosity. There’s a long sequence in the film where Cohen’s left-wing character has sex with a drugged-beyond-comprehension Ali G (apparently with a body double) while a non-actor listens to everything going on in the dark. But even in this Cohen-created universe, is it… one long rape joke? A guy sleeping with another guy, too fucked up to know it’s not his girlfriend? So, a gay rape joke? A gay rape joke about a guy pretending to be black? Donkey has already moved the needle for what will make audiences gasp, so watching Cohen ostensibly poop Ali G’s sperm after this sexual encounter is certainly disgusting, but not even that memorable.
When the first Borat came out, casting a spell on men and boys of all ages to scream “MY WIFE” as if it were his own punchline, Cohen was still mostly unknown. His satire worked because nothing was known about him, and so he could hide in plain sight in a persona intended to shock. But now Cohen is a mainstream celebrity, and we know a lot about him: we know about his divorce, his prolonged use of blackface, and even the long-running allegations that he harassed actress Rebel Wilson on set.
Besides, the world has moved on since Cohen’s days, and his brand of comedy is no longer shocking or particularly poignant. Having an idiot say stupid things to politicians no longer makes anyone laugh; it’s just CSPAN now.
Who am I was never great, but compared to the recent slate of documentaries and unscripted films released, it seems particularly offbeat. It’s impossible to watch without considering all the other recent documentaries and unscripted projects that have blown Cohen out of the water. Nathan Fielder, co-director of You can see everythingalso comes from a comedic background and still managed to create something funnier and deeper in his exploration of Holmes than Cohen did in his dissection of American political and racial consciousness. Cohen works very hard to make you laugh. At one point he shows you a bunch of right-wing white guys wearing fake penis harnesses that they have to jerk off to fire a gun that loads through holes in the harness. (I know. I know.) But all Fielder had to do was show a woman weirdly whisking eggs and the audience wandered down the aisles of a three-hour documentary.
Cohen was once a master at walking into an unknowable situation with powerful people and turning it on its head in one way or another, both for laughs but often for deeply serious irony. He made people look stupid by acting stupid, and that was noble work. Now, we have the impression that he is the only one who does not understand that we are not making fun of him, or even with him. We don’t laugh all.
