Da Ali G Show

Ali is the best personality on television. I live in America and only found out about him from a friend but once I saw him I couldn't stop laughing. This guy is hilarious and would take America by storm if his show ever aired here. I recommend that everyone watches this guy at least once and I'll guarantee that you'll be coming for more.

Network: HBO; Genre: Sketch, Comedy, Improv; Content Rating: TV-MA (for graphic sexual dialog, profanity, scatological humor and graphic nudity); Available: DVD; Perspective: Cult Classic (star range: 1 - 5);

Seasons Reviewed: Complete Series (2 seasons)

A comic performer going out into the real world, interacting with real people and annoying them to the breaking point for our amusement has been a staple of tacky infantile TV for as long as I can remember. Always-in-character British satirist Sacha Baron Cohen is several notches above the hacks you'd normally see in a sub-genre that has been co-opted by MTV and Comedy Central for so long. Under the guise of Ali G wanting to cure America of it's blues in the wake of "the attacks of 7/11", Cohen graces HBO with his presence and delivers a real treat for those like myself who have never seen his trio of characters on the original British incarnation of "Da Ali G Show", but only heard about them in television lore.

Cohen is a chameleon of a comic genius. He doesn't just do voices, he has taken the Phil Hendrie approach and created characters. Having embodied them for years he knows his characters through-and-through and while we don't get any expository background on them he has created such a world for each of them that those paying attention will be rewarded with running gags, quotable catch-phrases and details about their lives.

Our host for this anarchists' talk show is Ali G, a Brit drowning in Tommy Hilfiger and hip hop culture who genuinely believes that he is black. Hilariously, Ali G doesn't know anything about anything, can barely speak the English language through his constant mangled hip-hop slang, is always diverting the interviews to a personal problem of his own and has no appropriateness boundaries whatsoever. He uses a sex educator to try to prove a child isn't his, tries to make a drug deal with Pat Buchanan if he can ever pass the "coni" and drops an anecdote about "me Julie" to anybody. Interviews with James Lipton ("liking acting doesn't make you a queer"), Andy Rooney and Sam Donaldson are priceless. The mind boggles at how Cohen is able to get these. Watch as Ali G asks Buchanan if it is right to go to war "over BLTs" and Buchanan just rolls with it. Watch as he tries to explain political bias to Sam Donaldson. Even better, are the round-table discussions on his own graffiti-sprayed, fenced-off, chalk-outline-on-the-flood set, while "experts" sit around and just take it as Ali G asks the stupidest questions you can't possibly imagine and dodges the slightest reference to homosexuality.

Then, straight from another part of the globe is Kazakstan journalist Borat for the "Borat in U. S. and A" segment. Cohen makes Borat's segments a show within itself complete with subtitles and grainy hand-held 3rd world country video. Borat is a treasure, who crawls into the lives of his interviews because he comes off as such an innocent while at the same time espousing a hatred of Jews, gypsy's and a treatment of women as sex slaves that he supposedly learned in Kazakstan. Cohen has Borat speak with a Polish accent and plays with American's complete lack of knowledge of the country. He uses political correctness as a gun people turn on themselves, knowing that Americans are so afraid of being called racist or xenophobic that they will let Borat do just about anything to them. Borat walks around with a political candidate and, when a woman answers the door, asks if there is a voter in the house. Borat sings his own country song "Throw the Jew down the well" that catches fire in a crowded saloon. Borat goes on speed dating and tells the girl that if she cheats on him, he will "crush her". There is so much to Borat's, his 10 minute segments don't do him justice. The show is best viewed as a companion with Sacha Baron Cohen's blockbuster feature film "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit of Glorious Nation of Kazakstan" to get the full scope of Cohen's vision.

Bruno is the least developed of the 3. A fashion reporter for Australian gay TV, it appears that Cohen loves doing the accent and doing the worm on the catwalk but can't figure out what he is satirizing here. The fashion industry? Who cares? A phony celebrity-obsessed culture? That's more like it. In season 1, Cohen keeps Bruno caged inside fashion show segments. It isn't until season 2 when he lets Bruno out that the character finds itself. When Cohen casts Bruno as a fish-out-of-water interviewing wrestlers at Datona beach or interviewing a man who runs a rehabilitation center for homosexuals (Bruno's funniest interview), the show hits a Phil Hendrie/Doug Danger note that really works for it and Bruno holds up the mirror to repressed homophobia and the contrived nature of reality shows and fashion critique.

My biggest problem with "Da Ali G Show" is that it is just too short. Way to short. 12 episodes left me screaming for more. As heated as some of the interviews get, Cohen's larger joke is usually on his character. His ability to hold up the funhouse mirror and make fun of the potential stupidity of youth hip-hop culture and the potential xenophobia in areas of America not familiar with "Ali G" from the inside out is a beautiful thing. In America, the only comparison we have to it is Mike Judge who has been subversively making teenagers and office drones laugh at themselves for years. Sacha Baron Cohen is even better. He's more on the edge, more into Jonathan Swift satirical territory and "Ali G" is screamingly, obscenely funny cult classic for it.

* * * * / 5

I cannot choose my favorite character of the three. Is it Ali G? The irascible child/adolescent British "gangsta" black? or Middle Eastern?guy..oblivious to much and yet so childishly poignant in his worldly assessments that sometimes....sometimes...he makes sense...check out his interview with American astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who Ali calls "Buzz Lightyear." Aldrin is the patient avuncular soul, never condescending or showing impatience with his petulant interviewer..unlike the rather ungallant Newt GIngrich or JAmes LIpton....never mind the horrific DOnald Trump who is in such a hurry he never has time to grasp ALi and comes off as a crass though not completely without humor "suit"....I enjoyed Lipton's rejection of Ali's pre-penned rap...and the one he scribbled and performed wasn't half bad....high five for that.....

Borat is the adorable foreigner miscreant we all want to love and humor despite his hilarious and shocking public announcements....the SOuth CArolina dinner foibles is classic Borat....the dating agency between the scantily clad interviewer to the matronly Texan who BOrat naively asks"When will we make sexy intercourse?" He wants to "crush" any woman who would "cheat" him...the pronouncement at dinner that his sister is a prostitute because "she like to make money...she is nice"...the extended singing of his national anthem at the "baseballs" game...My favorite of everything...is it the audience's pretend politeness, the pained graciousness? THe contrived intensity of Borat as he warbles his national anthem? I'm not sure...but it works.

ANd last of the trinity, Bruno.....the sashaying fashion gossipy boy, gay and shallow...yet so able to probe his naive fashion designers into self-ridicule...the consistently inconsistent answers he draws from the fashion designers is funny ...and also frightening....his worm down the runway when he manages to sham his way as a male model is priceless...."Begin to look" he shouts as he turns his thonged exposed bottom on the seedy streets of LA introducing a supposed Austrian audience lapping up his adventure in seedy capital.....

SOme one stop me...Sacha Baron Cohen is a hands down genius and I do not want to see him highly successful as that will necessarily mean his subversiveness is no longer subversive...he is a jewel in a cavern that I do not mind sharing with some...keep the ignorant masses away...I did like that the Queen Mother snapped her fingers and uttered "Respek" at Christmas dinner to her royal family...we may just be unable to prevent the tide when it is the right time...if so, let the waters of comedic satiric Cohen fall down all around....

At this point in his career, Cohen has made a movie for all three of the characters who are frequent in this show, and I have to say that I prefer all of their appearances in Da Ali G Show to their full-length movies, although that may be because they work better in this setting. The show has no real determination to establish and maintain a followable plot-line, and it ends up as a collection of short segments from each character every episode. This allows Sascha Baron Cohen to remain calm, clear-headed, and to really fire on all cylinders with the sometimes improvised, always hilarious sketches.

The show is comprised mostly of interviews arranged for in the field, but Ali G does have studio interviews where he asks others to come to him and discuss controversial topics. The premise of the show is basically the humor behind a clash of culture, and we frequently see the characters in situations where they simply do not belong. Ali G and Borat both have a kind of ignorant edge, making them totally absorbed into the culture they're used to and at times lethal around people with different backgrounds. Bruno plays a lesser role in the show, and really isn't one of my favorite characters all together, but his goal is basically to surround himself with people unaccustomed to gay culture and to make them writhe in discomfort.

Borat's interview with a dating service and Ali G's forum on porno and abstinence are absolutely hysterical, and Ali G even has an interview terminated for "stupidity".

I think that this show, more than any of the movies displays the characters in their best light, and also shows more than anything how talented Sascha really is. There were times when viewing this show that I stopped laughing prematurely to acknowledge how truly impressed I was that he was able to keep a straight face while unleashing absolute nonsense based on real (albeit exaggerated) stereotypes.

I never know whether to simply laugh out loud (which I do) or clap my hands at the sheer audacity, the self control Cohen must need to spoof so many people so well. But usually it's a moot point, since I'm laughing too hard to do anything at all! "Ali G" has an uncanny ability to push his victim's buttons, all the while acting as an incredibly ignorant and occasionally boorish interviewer. Watch him take on Pat Buchanan ("'Ow many times was you President?"), Sam Donaldson ("Does you remember the scandal when da two journalists brought down the guv'mint in the scandal of Waterworld?") or Buzz Aldrin ("Was you jealous because Louis Armstrong was the first person to walk on da sun?") He also goes on location to farms ("Obviously some so't of trash zoo,") hangs with the tree huggers in Oregon, and visits an anti-gay rights rally with predictable results. Like his idol George Bush, he proves to be the biggest, clumsiest bull in the most delicate of china shops, with hilarious results.

Cohen can rightly claim the throne vacated by the late Peter Sellers, with none of the frightening edge that Sellers developed in later life. As Ali G himself would say, "Total Respec!"