Last week, I expressed my total delight in the fact that Oct. 23 was the best day of the year so far for pop culture, thanks to the new “Borat” sequel, a solid new Bill Murray movie, and both an album and documentary from Bruce Springsteen. I only previewed those selections, however, so this week I’m writing my actual reviews of them.
“Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” is both the highest-profile film of the trio and the most entertaining. Starring the brilliant British comic Sacha Baron Cohen in a reprise of his character from the 2006 smash “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” the new film follows his misadventures when he’s sent back to America to offer his 15-year-old daughter to Vice President Mike Pence.
If you know anything about the first “Borat,” you’ll know that no matter how absurd the situations he creates, Cohen manages to get real people to say or do ridiculously stupid things on camera. In the first movie, he trained his camera mostly on average citizens as he traveled nationwide. What makes the new film even more audacious and must-viewing is the fact that Cohen has trained his sights this time on not only the actual Veep but also President Trump’s controversial attorney and friend, Rudy Giuliani.
The sequel begins by showing that Borat has been in a hard-labor prison camp for the 14 years since his first movie came out and made him a source of Kazakhstan’s national shame. He gets his chance to get out because Kazakhstan’s leader has noticed that President Trump has an affinity for dictators like Kim Jong Un, and he wants to gain the president’s favor to help Kazakhstan improve its circumstances.
The idea is to bring a major gift to the president, but for convoluted reasons, the Kazakh president decides that giving Borat’s daughter to Pence – and eventually Giuliani when the Pence showdown goes awry – is just as good. Thus, Borat takes his ridiculously mistreated daughter Tutar (newcomer Maria Bakalova) out of the barn she’s living in – Borat comically portrays Kazakhstan as an incredibly sexist nation – and takes her to the U.S. to doll her up and make her presentable to Pence.
Borat buys an amazing assortment of costumes and wigs in order to go undercover in various situations, and the cornucopia of characters he uses to fake his way past all manner of Americans is utterly hilarious. But Bakalova gives Cohen a run for his money in a daring, no-holds-barred performance that has her fearlessly shocking people nationwide, all the while with a sweet and innocent smile on her face.
To reveal any more would ruin the incessant fun of this movie, though I will say that the one weak spot is the notorious sequence with Giuliani. Taken in the context of the film, and the fact that they were setting him up, his encounter with the seemingly teenage Tutar is an unfair scenario.
And of course, anyone reading this should be made aware that while the “Borat” movies are brilliant satire, they are also incredibly vulgar. So be prepared to either be offended while laughing or steer clear completely.
“On the Rocks” is the Bill Murray film, and it reteams him with writer-director Sofia Coppola for the first time since she led him to an Oscar-nominated performance in 2004’s “Lost in Translation.” In it, he plays Felix, a lifelong playboy and father of a woman named Laura (Rashida Jones), who is worried that her constantly traveling husband Dean (Marlon Wayans) is having an affair with a female underling.
Laura admits her concerns to her father, only to roll her eyes when Felix hits her with his Cro-Magnon theories about male-female relationships. But when Felix suggests they tail Dean around Manhattan and see if he’s fooling around with his staffer, she reluctantly goes along for the very funny ride.
“Rocks” isn’t a hilarious movie except in a great car chase scene, but it will make you smile and chuckle throughout most of it. The real pleasure here is seeing a comedy done with intelligence and class in an age when we’re subjected to a constant flow of uninspired dreck “comedies” on Netflix that make Hallmark movies look like masterpieces.
All three of the lead performances are solid, with Murray clearly having a fun time – especially in the car chase and when summoning memories of his SNL character Nick the Lounge Singer in a karaoke scene. Jones is always a good actress, but Wayans is the biggest surprise here, playing Dean with a well-rounded intelligence.
“On the Rocks” makes for smooth sailing throughout.
Finally, Springsteen’s “Letter to You” is a low-key, black-and-white examination of the creative process behind his latest album, of the same name. He and the members of his legendary E Street Band have been recording together for nearly 50 years now, and it’s both warm and fun to see how well they work as a team en route to creating catchy rock songs filled with lyrical meaning.
What makes “Letter” even more interesting to fans is that Springsteen reveals facts like his belief that his songs and albums are correspondences with his fans, and that for him, a song is a prayer. He feels most in tune with God when he’s creating his classic tunes, and the entire enterprise is thoughtful due to the fact that the album is a tribute to the now-deceased other members of the band he started with: The Castiles.
Between the soulful narrative passages, the songs come to vibrant life in rousing performances. Springsteen has created this film and the 2019 doc “Western Stars” (also named after a concurrent album) as substitutes for tours, so grab the chance to see some good rock and roll while you can.
