Sacha Baron Cohen has a stellar and controversial career with his extraordinary array of characters that started with Ali G back in the late 1990’s. A beloved character that had everyone doing impression (even Richard Madeley whose unwitting normal screen persona is that other fictional comic creation Alan Partridge) of the white boy wannabe gangster that saw him appear in his first feature film ‘Ali G IndaHouse’ back in 2002. Society has changed in the past 25 years and not always for the better and it’s that which has impacted on the character in, ‘Who Iz I?’ with the film begins with him reflecting on those changing times.
That the film opens with a quote from Voltaire and then a title sequence that emphasizes that no one we will see is in on the joke and then introduces two other characters from Cohen’s TV series – an Israeli military commander and an uber- liberal lefty. Both are integral to the plot which sees Ali G still with Me,Julie (the terrific Morgana Robinson who is underused here) pregnant with his baby. But with Ali being skint having had a third season of his TV show cancelled by HBO only to find that actually they had commissioned a third series except he gets the message twenty years too late but celebrates and announces his return to TV anyway.
His return catches the attention of Cohen’s uber- liberal who regards him as being that most heinous of crimes, a cultural appropriator and determines to stop Ali and goes about recruiting real life people to help him along with the assistance of Cohen’s Israeli military man in hatching a plot to prevent the return of Ali G.
It’s a slow start with a largely laugh-less first fifteen minutes but in keeping with Cohen’s oeuvre and writers that he has worked with for decades that includes Anthony Hines, Dan Swimer, Dan Mazer Keisha Zollar and the hugely influential Peter Baynham ( who has been integral in both Steve Coogan and Chris Morris’ careers) there are some jaw droppingly outrageous set pieces in this, often very funny and frequently leaving you astonished that he and his team could get members of the public to do such things. Anyone who saw Senator Jason Spencer drop his trousers and bare his arse as a terrorist defence technique in ‘Who is America?’ will be open mouthed at what he gets two right wing extremists to do.
Perhaps the biggest achievement here is that Cohen plays three characters integral to the plot that is one continuous sequence filmed over the course of eight hours that sees him flit between playing each of his three characters in the same scene in real time that’s as much a tribute to clever planning, sly distraction techniques and minute by minute scheduling that if any of it had gone awry would have immediately put an end to the stunt that brings the film to its conclusion. Quite what the contingency plans were for it going awry is a film in itself.
So how does it compare to his previous films. Each of his films have only one real moment of opportunity to make an impact before the world rumbles the character and its where the first Ali G film failed having chosen to abandon the improvisation around a central structure instead for a scripted film. It was a mistake that was quickly rectified to immense success with the first Borat film. Decades later the Ali G persona is still immediately identifiable and so similar to the second Borat film the characters appearance had to be changed and so gone is the duram, the goatee and the shiny yellow tracksuit and replaced with dreadlocks, a full beard and a kilt.
Cohen is a whip smart comedian and much of the film is a worthy push back at being woke that have made certain issues taboo as well and taking digs at the right wing too. It’s not without its moments and the films combination of stunts, set ups and laugh out loud moments at their best are very good but there’s not quite the inspired moments of improvisation that we first saw in the Ali G interviews that made the character both endearing and insightful and instead at best, ‘Who Is I?’ is, at best, a patchy affair.
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Here’s the trailer….
