At a time when political absurdity has become so commonplace that reality frequently feels beyond parody, the return of Sacha Baron Cohen‘s Ali G should, in theory, provide the perfect opportunity to expose the increasingly ridiculous state of modern society. After all, Baron Cohen built his reputation on confronting prejudice through comedy, using the apparent stupidity of his characters to expose the ignorance of those around them. But more than two decades after Ali G first became a cultural phenomenon, Ali G: Who Iz I? finds the comedian struggling to recapture the anarchic brilliance that once made his work feel genuinely dangerous.
Making his directorial debut, Baron Cohen clearly has plenty to say about cultural appropriation, political extremism, performative activism and the increasingly blurred relationship between entertainment and misinformation. Unfortunately, having something to say and finding an amusing way to say it are two very different things, and this belated revival too often mistakes outrageousness for insight, delivering a chaotic, occasionally inspired but predominantly exhausting comedy that feels strangely out of touch with the very world it’s attempting to ridicule.
Picking up with Ali G (Baron Cohen) considerably older but certainly no wiser, the film finds the former television personality back in Staines, financially desperate and facing the prospect of fatherhood with his heavily pregnant girlfriend Julie (Morgana Robinson). When a decades-old offer from HBO mistakenly convinces him that another season of his television show could restore his fortunes, the pair head to America, where Ali’s attempts to reclaim celebrity relevance collide with a culture that has become considerably less forgiving of his particular brand of racial impersonation. His subsequent efforts to reinvent himself as a social media personality attract the attention of Nira Cain-N’Degeocello, an aggressively self-righteous academic, also played by Baron Cohen, determined to hold him accountable for his cultural appropriation.
Throw in another of the comedian’s elaborate disguises as an Israeli security operative, alongside an increasingly convoluted scheme involving right-wing extremists, and what initially promises to be an amusing examination of an outdated character navigating contemporary sensitivities quickly becomes an overstuffed collection of competing ideas. The decision to return to the mockumentary format of Borat and Brüno, rather than the more conventional storytelling of Ali G Indahouse, is understandable, but the increasingly elaborate narrative connecting these encounters often feels like an unnecessary distraction from the comedy itself.
The greatest disappointment is that Baron Cohen still possesses an extraordinary ability to manipulate uncomfortable situations into revealing something genuinely disturbing about the people participating in them. Encounters involving political personalities and conservative provocateurs occasionally expose attitudes that would be difficult to believe if they weren’t being expressed so willingly, and a particularly grotesque game-show sequence offers a chilling reminder of how casually dehumanising rhetoric can be repackaged as entertainment. Yet the problem is that the film rarely knows what to do with these revelations beyond presenting them as another opportunity for shock.
Where Borat frequently found humour in the uncomfortable distance between someone’s public decency and their private prejudices, Who Iz I? operates in a world where those prejudices are increasingly expressed without embarrassment. The targets are often so openly reprehensible that their participation becomes less a surprising exposure of hypocrisy than a depressing confirmation of attitudes audiences already know exist. Baron Cohen also appears determined to ridicule every conceivable corner of the cultural conversation, from performative liberalism to anti-trans hysteria, but the satire becomes so scattered that its perspective frequently loses definition. His caricature of progressive academic superiority occasionally makes a worthwhile observation about the difference between advocating for marginalised communities and actually listening to them, but the joke is repeated long after its point has been established. More frustratingly, the film’s increasingly contrived scenarios and conspicuous production machinery undermine the spontaneity that once made Baron Cohen’s confrontational comedy so effective.
To dismiss the film entirely, however, would be unfair, because buried beneath its relentless desperation to offend are moments that demonstrate why Baron Cohen became such a formidable comedic provocateur in the first place. An elaborate apology sequence involving an AI-generated musical tribute from prominent Black cultural figures is both gloriously tasteless and surprisingly perceptive, skewering the insincerity of celebrity accountability while exposing the grotesque possibilities of technology being used to manufacture approval. It’s one of the few occasions where the film’s absurdity feels purposeful rather than merely excessive, and the uncomfortable reactions it provokes are arguably more revealing than the joke itself.
Similarly, the increasingly sinister political encounters of the final act briefly recapture the unsettling unpredictability of Baron Cohen’s strongest work, even if their effectiveness raises questions about how much of the surrounding material was necessary to reach them. The recurring use of artificial intelligence is particularly indicative of the film’s uneven approach: sometimes it becomes an effective tool for satirising a culture increasingly comfortable with synthetic realities, while elsewhere it feels like another lazy shortcut to an outrageous visual gag. And although Robinson brings some welcome energy to Julie, the character is largely relegated to servicing a narrative that continually prioritises Baron Cohen’s multiple personas over anything resembling emotional investment. Even Ali G himself, ostensibly the reason for this revival, feels strangely secondary to the increasingly desperate machinery surrounding him.
Perhaps the most damning criticism of Ali G: Who Iz I? is that it feels less like a comedian challenging the boundaries of acceptable humour than one struggling to understand where those boundaries now exist. This isn’t necessarily a question of whether Ali G is still an appropriate character for contemporary audiences; indeed, the film’s willingness to interrogate his cultural identity is one of its more promising ideas. Rather, it’s whether the character still has anything particularly illuminating to offer. The world has changed, the nature of public outrage has changed, and the people Baron Cohen once relied upon to inadvertently expose themselves have become increasingly comfortable broadcasting their worst instincts without his assistance.
At its best, the film recognises this uncomfortable reality and briefly finds something incisive within it. At its worst, it falls back on crude spectacle, laboured disguises and increasingly juvenile provocations that feel more interested in generating controversy than earning laughter. There’s something almost dispiriting about watching a comedian once so adept at making audiences question their own reactions resort to repeatedly reminding them that what they’re witnessing is supposedly real. A handful of genuinely audacious sequences prevent this from being a complete creative failure, but they also make the surrounding mediocrity considerably harder to forgive. Ali G may still be determined to spread the love, but after more than two decades away, his return suggests that some cultural phenomena are better appreciated as products of their time than resurrected in the hope that nostalgia alone can make them relevant again.
TWO STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Ali G: Who Iz I? is currently screening in select Australian theatres before streaming on Prime Video from October 28th, 2026.
