‘Ali G: Who Iz I?’ Review: Sacha Baron Cohen Reprises Iconic Role, Yielding Equal Parts Belly Laughs and Boredom

Ali G is older, but not a bit wiser, in his latest big-screen incarnation, the first since 2002’s Ali G Indahouse. And judging by the amount of controversy that’s already been stirred up, Sacha Baron Cohen’s iconic character of a middle-class white Brit appropriating hip-hop and Jamaican mannerisms still has the ability to rile people.

Marking Cohen’s feature directorial debut, Ali G: Who Iz I? differs from its predecessor with its mockumentary format similar to that of the Borat films. Unfortunately, it’s a decidedly hit-and-miss affair; there are plenty of laughs, to be sure, but many dead spots as well. Being given a limited theatrical release this week, the film will find a bigger audience when it begins streaming on Prime Video.

As he did on HBO’s Da Ali G Show (which the character vainly attempts to resurrect now, based on an offer from the cable channel from decades ago), Ali G interacts with real people to greater or lesser comedic effect. From the beginning, the film takes pains to make sure you know that the interactions have not been scripted; after identifying the few fictional characters, including Ali’s very pregnant girlfriend Julie (an admirably fearless Morgana Robinson, taking over the role from the previous film’s Kellie Bright), an onscreen graphic assures us, “Everybody else in the movie is real.” There’s also a brief recap of Ali G to bring viewers up to speed, including clips of past interactions with such figures as Buzz Aldrin and Donald Trump.

There are some scripted scenes involving Ali and Julie, involving such silly plotlines as Ali coming to believe that he’s the biological son of A$AP Rocky (the rapper/actor, along with Rihanna, shows up late in the film to let us know that he’s in on the joke). But the bulk of the film revolves around the (supposedly) non-scripted interactions with real folks, some of them famous, featuring not only Ali but also two other characters played by Cohen — Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello, a demented, ultra-leftist university professor, and Erran Morad, a jacked Israeli former Mossad agent (both reprised from his Showtime series Who Is America?).

Some of the bits wouldn’t have passed muster on Candid Camera, such as Ali ineptly trying out for a job at a zoo and angering the zookeeper by offering animals “grass” of the cannabis kind. Or attempting to sell an urn at a pawn shop, only to accidentally spill the ashes inside it on the floor. Or his flustering a gynecologist by insisting that Julie, whose belly is of mammoth proportions, isn’t really pregnant. And a lengthy segment in which Ali racks up a $12,000 bill at a fancy restaurant with his show business “team,” only to learn that HBO won’t be paying for it, falls completely flat.

More successful are bits in which the professor speaks at a California Department of Education meeting to propose a “Compulsory Gender Reversal Year”; Ali scarfing down over-the-counter boner pills at a liquor store in front of a bemused sales clerk, with very visible results; and a lecture given to various religious figures, in which he shows a video including testimonials from the likes of Nelson Mandela, Tupac Shakur, and The Notorious B.I.G. (“Not AI,” he assures them.)

At one point Ali is given the opportunity to host a new program, “The Free Speech Show with Ali G,” which gives him the opportunity to showcase such real-life guests as Jacob Chansley, the QAnon shaman, and George Santos. But the segment fizzles out, because making someone like Santos look like a fool seems redundant. And managing to get the audience to deliver a Nazi salute doesn’t seem like much of a stretch these days.

Speaking of not much of a stretch: The most elaborate sequence involves the Mossad agent recruiting a bunch of white Texas yahoos to participate in a plot to kidnap Julie’s baby (don’t ask why, it’s complicated), and to don a “weapon” on the lower half of their bodies in which they pump a phallus to load and the projectile shoots outs of their buttocks. The plot is carried out to horrific proportions, but the subjects are so utterly moronic that the gag stops being amusing.

Cohen is so naturally funny and quick with improvisation that there are plenty of laughs along the way. And while much of the material is offensive, that’s really the point. But the humor starts to drag with the feature-length running time. Ali G, it seems, is best taken in small doses.