Do we like Sacha Baron Cohen?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Decent and on the right side for years, with one live, contested question about whether Ali G punches down.
Cohen is the man behind Ali G, Borat and Brüno, characters who walk unsuspecting people into saying the quiet part out loud. The new Ali G film was reportedly shot in secret around the UK and US, and his reps declined to comment when the rumours first surfaced. It's the first big return for the character in about two decades.
The Ali G revival is the live stoush. A campaign group called NewsCord has pushed cinemas not to screen it, accusing Cohen of using satire as a cover for racist stereotypes and citing a 2000 report in which Black British comedians called the character an alibi for racism. Cohen's own response was a tweet saying he thought he'd play it safe and bring this guy back. The UK Cinema Association said cinemas are not there to act as censors.
Where you land depends on whether you read Ali G as a white man mocking Black culture, or as a send-up of a white suburban kid who plays at it. Cohen's defence, on 60 Minutes, is that his subjects often don't look foolish on screen and that the work exposes hatred and also shows people's kindness. Critics aren't buying it for this character, and fair enough to hear them out.
Nothing turned up on trans people or the climate, and I found no harmful words of his own on either, so that's a gap rather than a pass in itself. His Roy Moore prank ended up in court: a federal judge dismissed Moore's $95 million defamation suit in 2021, finding Moore had signed an agreement barring such claims. Moore said he would appeal, and I couldn't confirm how that ended.
On how he treats people, there's one allegation. Rebel Wilson said in 2024 that he was a nightmare on The Brothers Grimsby, and her account included a claim that he repeatedly asked her to do nude scenes. His spokesperson called the claims demonstrably false and said they were contradicted by documents, film footage and eyewitnesses. It's one person's word against another's, nothing was decided in court, and I've kept it as alleged. Separately, in 2018 Sarah Palin complained he'd disguised himself to trick her, and Showtime said he never posed as a disabled veteran.
The good stuff is real. After Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, he gave $100,000 to charities in the name of Jeanise Jones, the babysitter in the film, to help her Oklahoma City community. It was a decent move after a GoFundMe highlighted how little she'd been paid.