The funniest moment in Ali G: Who Iz I?, a new comedy sequel from Sacha Baron Cohen, arrives just a couple of minutes in. The actor, reprising his decades-old role, is seen asking revered astronaut Buzz Aldrin: “Do you think man will ever walk on the sun?” Aldrin’s response is – naturally – abject bafflement. The problem? This footage is now 23 years old, ripped from the archives of Da Ali G Show. Over the subsequent 90-odd minutes, Who Iz I? fails to devise anything as funny as this fleeting, inane lick of mischief.
What we get instead is a bitter, contrived and politically reprehensible assemblage of in-the-wild skits, pitting Baron Cohen against an unwitting public, in the vein of Borat and Bruno. (His previous Ali G film, 2002’s Ali G Indahouse, was more conventionally scripted.) Who Iz I? was announced back at the end of July, and will be in cinemas for just three days this weekend – a strange release strategy for what is an equally strange film. The plot is thin, and loudly meta-referential, following Baron Cohen’s faux-rudeboy as he attempts to relaunch his showbiz career in the face of cancellation, the tide of public opinion having soured on his cartoonish cultural appropriation at some point in the past two decades.
