Borat, redux, sort of

Kazakh solidarity prevented my wife from joining me, but when Borat-mania swept the United States a few years ago, I went and watched the Sacha Baron Cohen film. The nude hotel elevator scene was hilarious, as was the general satire on Americans. But what apparently stuck in Erkin Rakishev’s craw was the use of an over-the-top British actor with a vaguely Turkish appearance, filming in Romania, as a spoof on a place that few knew anything about. The Kazakh director’s antidote? As Clifford Levy writes in today’s New York Times, it is two over-the-top Russian actors with, respectively, Slavic and vaguely Turkish appearances, filming this time in Almaty in a spoof on a place that few still know anything about.

Rakishev’s My Brother Borat is opening now in Kazakhstan, with Anton Mitnov playing Borat’s brother, Bilo, and Roman Khikalov as his American acquaintance, John. Like the original, it seems likely to get heavy critical coverage, particularly if it is translated into English and distributed in the U.S. Rakishev brashly dares Cohen to sue him for copyright infringement, seeing that as a sure road to box office success.

The clips available on YouTube (below), and accompanying the Levy piece, give the impression of another over-the-top script heavy on slapstick. Will it satisfy the Kazakhs who boycotted the 2006 original? My short family survey suggests the answer is yes.