BOOYAKASHA

The Incendiary Comedy That’ll Infuriate Both the MAGA Right and Woke Left

‘Ali G: Who Iz I?” brings the comedian’s culture-appropriating clown back to the multiplex.

In the early aughts, Sacha Baron Cohen’s Ali G—alongside his make-believe brethren Borat Sagdiyev and Brüno Gehard—came on the scene like a jolt of comedic lightning, parodying cultural appropriation at the same time that he revealed the absurdity (and, sometimes, unpleasantness) of his unsuspecting (famous) interview subjects. A wildly inappropriate doofus who assumed black slang and fashion to make himself, as much as his duped victims, the butt of the joke, he was a caricatured agent of exposure, and especially on his HBO series Da Ali G Show, his mischievous humor had a distinctly sharp edge.

Twenty-four years after his initial feature, Ali G Indahouse, Cohen’s clown finally returns to the big screen with Ali G: Who Iz I? (October 23 in theaters; October 30 on Prime Video). Yet while the character has changed little in the intervening decades, the same can’t be said of the cultural landscape he wants to skewer. Whereas Cohen’s prime object was always to coax unwitting marks into baring their souls (through moronic misunderstandings), that modus operandi is fundamentally hampered by the fact that, in 2026, virtually everyone—on both sides of the political spectrum—is perfectly content to loudly and proudly voice their ugliness. Which begs the question: what does a goofy prankster do when his central prank is no longer necessary?

For Cohen, the answer is self-reflexively poking fun at himself and his creation’s notorious reputation as a way of highlighting the ridiculousness of his decriers—all while doing his best to indulge in liberal- and conservative-mocking farcicality. Because so many people are onto the star’s disguise-centric ruses, Ali G: Who Iz I? boasts precious few inspired interfaces between the protagonist and celebrity faces, and it certainly falls short of the greatness of Borat. Nonetheless, despite its inherent limitations and more than a handful of easy-target gags, it’s always mildly amusing—and, on a couple of memorable occasions, legitimately laugh-out-loud funny.

Ali G: Who Iz I? commences with Voltaire’s famous quote, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,” and that sentiment is the guiding ethos of Cohen’s directorial debut. Following the cancellation of his television hit, Ali G moved back to his hometown of Staines on Thames, and he’s now expecting his first child with longtime girlfriend Julie (Morgana Robinson). To earn money, Ali G gets a job at a farm, only to get fired (and told that he’s “unemployable”) after trying to feed the animals marijuana. Thus, he’s compelled to pawn his valuables. Though those items are predictably worthless, his fortunes turn around when he plugs in his old fax machine (as he’s trying to sell it) and receives a stunning message: HBO is renewing Da Ali G Show for a cool $3.2 million.

Per tradition, Ali G: Who Iz I? involves Cohen and his fellow actor collaborators interacting with regular men and women in scenarios designed to see how the latter react to Ali G’s dim-bulb idiocy. Arriving in Los Angeles, Ali G is whisked away to a meeting with a production team that gets exceedingly expensive before a phone call informs him that HBO has no intention of partnering with him. This is trouble, since Julie is already checking out a lavish mansion, leading to a prolonged encounter with a realtor whose gameness for relaying sexual messages between Ali G and his paramour is heroically impressive—and, in the film’s initial fourth wall-breaking moment, causes Cohen to giggle at his own childishness.

Ali G’s (fleeting) professional resurrection is the catalyst for a story that additionally involves Cohen’s Who is America? character Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello, a bald, pudgy wokester academic who decries Ali G’s cultural appropriation even as he perpetrates it as an arrogant “expert” on black history. Cohen’s lampooning of leftist ideologues is part and parcel of his equal opportunity spoofery, but it’s rather one-note, and that’s similarly true of scenes with former Mossad agent Erran Morad, who’s deployed as a device to convince a collection of California right-wingers to carry out an increasingly batshit mission on behalf of the U.S. government. Fortunately, that lengthy stunt—complete with the participation of clueless politicians such as Newt Gingrich—results in a pointed portrait of xenophobia run amok that says more than most of the preceding bits.

Ali G briefly hosts a new TV program (“The Free Speech Show”) spearheaded by a South African producer (and DJ’d by the Qanon Shaman) that swiftly devolves into Third Reich-grade entertainment, and its guests include George Santos and Kari Lake—underscoring the MAGA politicos’ apparent comfortability with Nazism. Simultaneously, Ali G: Who Iz I? takes pains to make fun of liberals by putting them in wildly embarrassing situations that prove they’ll tolerate just about anything in order to not offend. The film’s satirical critiques are, by and large, spot-on. The problem, though, is that they’re not really enlightening, and in fact, can feel redundant, given that their prey resemble any number of prior bigoted and silly Cohen suckers. Moreover, they’re sketchy; in most instances, set-ups last merely a minute or so, thereby negating any chance for escalating craziness.

Cohen’s over-the-top improvisation skills remain proficient, and his film’s soundtrack (full of rap songs that comment on the action) is perfectly moronic. However, Ali G: Who Iz I? only sporadically gives the headliner something truly hilarious to say or do. Multiple promising scenes end before they pick up any steam—the byproduct, one assumes, of people not putting up with his foolishness—and his quips are hit and miss. The wacko transgressiveness of his earlier outings is missing from this 89-minute endeavor, and its wannabe-showstopping final doesn’t quite land on a comedic level, no matter that it successfully outs two conservatives as murderously committed to their anti-immigration cause.

Ali G: Who Iz I? is at its best when pushing its impropriety to a legitimately outrageous degree—the finest example of which is an AI generated apology video produced by Ali G and shown to a group of dumbstruck religious leaders. Such highs are intermittent, but when they materialize, they prove that the character hasn’t lost his ability to pull back the curtain on America’s dark, extremist heart. One simply wishes he demonstrated that gift more consistently than he does in this fitfully charming and witty—if never quite riotous—multiplex homecoming.

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Nick SchagerEntertainment Critic

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