Ali G is back: This is the new film

Ali G is back: This is the new film In the late 90s, television audiences first encountered him: Ali G – a parody of an eccentric white rapper from a British small town, conceived by actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. His alter ego got its own TV show and in 2002, a feature film: "Ali G in da House." Ali G became famous for his interviews with prominent conversational partners, whom he regularly forced into putting on a show about themselves. A kind of humor that was well-received around the turn of the millennium – but Baron Cohen also repeatedly faced criticism and accusations that he exploited symbols of the Black community to make fun of them. His character was deemed racist, sexist, and homophobic. After more than two decades, Baron Cohen has now pulled Ali G out of the closet again. The film "Ali G: Who Iz I?" is also his directorial debut. However, the excitement over the return was subdued: Boycott calls had already surfaced beforehand. The film was originally set to premiere in local cinemas on October 23rd, but Sony removed it from its schedule without official explanation. In the US, it received negative reviews and quickly moved to streaming after only a few days. Here in Germany, Ali G's comeback is now available on Amazon Prime Video. In the past few years, Baron Cohen had already attempted a revival of another alter ego: that of the Kazakh journalist Borat. But even he could only offer conditionally relevant commentary to the chaotic present day. In the new film, Ali G confronts an unexpected situation: his long-time girlfriend Julie (Morgana Robinson) is pregnant – and not just somewhat swollen as he initially suspected. So, money needs to be found to support the newborn citizen of Earth. And for this, the expectant father has a plan: a new season of his "Ali G Show" is supposed to save the day. The couple therefore travels to the USA to strike a deal with HBO. Ali G is convinced that he will be doing something good with it. Because since the end of his show, the world has gone quite downhill: "There was Covid, wars... and Ed Sheeran." He has also thought about what to tell the production team for the first new episode: that there are so many problems with the environment. Therefore, he decided on starting by saying, "that we'll fix it." Later, from his new bodyguard, he wants to know if he has ever died for a client before. Later, Ali G makes fun of people on TikTok, whispers into his wrongly set microphone, and puts cat-ear headphones on his interview partner. That is actually quite funny – until Baron Cohen slips into another character: that of the "Wokeness" professor Dr. Nira Cain-N'Degeocello, who has made it a mission to cancel Ali G for cultural appropriation. To promote his cause, the white professor visits an event of the Black community in Oakland. There he steps up to the podium with a greeting of "Namaste," speaks about his book "I have a better dream" (inspired by Martin Luther King), and manages to enrage the entire hall in record time. To "apologize" for his political incorrectness, Ali G finally creates an AI video in which Nelson Mandela, Adolf Hitler, and Greta Thunberg take sides with him. And it continues like that – always accompanied by the sense of humor of a brooding teenager who probably thinks he's profound but mostly just provokes with suggestive jokes, insults, and profanity. Later, Ali G puts an aspiring ICE employee and ex-Republican George Santos in what appears to be a game for a TV show, forcing them to stack dolls representing different minorities in a shower and turn on a gas faucet. Finally, a group of militia applicants is supposed to kidnap a newborn and send it to Mexico by drone so that it doesn't receive US citizenship. Eliciting radical reactions from unsuspecting people has always been one of Baron Cohen's specialties, no matter the costume. However, it is questionable whether the participants this time genuinely did not know they were being made fun of: One participant in the baby stunt told The Guardian that he recognized Baron Cohen despite the disguise and therefore played along with exaggerated enthusiasm. And extracting the worst out of people is truly no longer an art nowadays. Through algorithms, bots, and fake news, we know that this often happens even without a costumed comedian.