Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

With Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Sacha Baron Cohen cements his status as cinema’s greatest comic actor since Peter Sellers.

Arriving 14 years after Borat got audiences howling with laughter and changed the way many people said “very nice,” Kazakstan’s most notorious journalist returns to once more lampoon ignorant American behavior, this time in the warped reality known as 2020 and just under the wire for the Nov. 3 election.

Sent back to the States by the Kazakh government to reverse the shame he inflicted upon his country via the first film, Borat Sagdiyev encounters a paranoid nation whose residents are addicted to screens and distrust anything that challenges their worldview — a milieu improbably even more ripe for Cohen to skewer than the waning days of the George W. Bush era.

Frequently in disguise to evade detection, Cohen is his usual marvelous self, exhibiting impeccable self-control and bravery in situations that would wreck the common man, and the addition of Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova as Borat’s 15-year-old daughter Tutar proves an inspired casting choice. The pair are a wonder to behold as they fully commit to each opportunity for social mischief, most memorably at a debutante ball and a crisis pregnancy center.

Amidst their hilarious shenanigans, the Sagdiyevs follow a stronger narrative than Borat’s thinly sketched premise, especially when their initial plan to appease Mike Pence falls through and Borat commits to gifting Tutar to the Vice President — though any prominent Republican will do — and pays for her to be made over in the vein of a Fox News anchor.

In the cringe-worthy, multi-step process of “beautifying” Tutar — something she’s fully on-board with, thanks in part to brainwashing from the brilliant animated film-within-the-film that presents Melania Trump’s journey as that of a Disney princess — Borat Subsequent Moviefilm earns plentiful laughs, but also offers surprisingly poignant meditations on self-worth and feminism.

For this unexpected maturity and a witty final twist that reframes the film in an applause-worthy new light, the sequel may very well be one of the few follow-ups that improves on its already excellent predecessor.

Grade: A-minus. Rated R. Available to stream via Amazon Prime Video

(Photo: Amazon Studios)