Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020)
I actually watched this right the day after the first one, just took me a week to find time to write this. For reasons I’m not quite sure about myself, I enjoyed this newer one more than the original. From what I’ve read online, most people feel otherwise.
The useless fake story problem plagues this one as well, so maybe it was just easier for me to appreciate the actual skits due to how much more culturally relevant they feel. On the other hand, I felt that the first one hadn’t lost much of its bite when it comes to that, so it might also just have been that was better prepared for what to expect, and had an easier time ignoring the parts I don’t care about.
I would actually be much more interested in an extensive look behind the scenes – learning how they prepare for certain things, getting to know which parts were true to what extent, how they improve the material through good editing. For example, I’ve read one article about the “fertility dance” scene, and according to that, people there knew that something was up. They had to be told there would be filming, otherwise you couldn’t get material as good as was shown in the movie, so it already was a non-standard situation. They certainly weren’t told that “Borat” was coming, but nonetheless they said they were surprised how well the movie made it look as if they were all completely shocked and surprised, because actually they were not.
And I’m not saying that to bring the movie down – it is entertainment in the end, and the scene entertained me. I don’t want to see that Making Of so I can trash the movie for deceiving me, I’m just curious about the craft. Sadly, as far as I can tell, there is no bonus material available, I guess it’s not worth the effort producing anymore now that physical discs are on the way out?