Ali G: Who Iz I? hits Prime Video after a brief theatrical run, and amidst questions about creator/star/now-director Sacha Baron Cohen’s ability to be comedically relevant in 2026. Best known as The Borat Guy, Cohen has been playing Ali G — a British rapper whose quasi-Jamaican/“Black English” patois satirizes white men appropriating other cultures — for more than 25 years, and the film resurrects the character for another of the entertainer-slash-filmmaker’s trademark guerilla-style endeavors that aim to expose the troublesome beliefs of average people and public figures. Why? Good question. A better one may be, is it funny?
The Gist: Note: At the beginning and end (and even once in the middle) of Who Iz I?, we’re informed in plain and obvious terms as to who is or isn’t “in on it.” Cohen plays Ali G of course, as well as two heavy-with-prosthetics characters from his 2018 Who is America? TV series, former Israeli Mossad agent Erran Morad and ultra-leftist intellectual Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello. His primary co-star is Morgana Robinson as Ali G’s girlfriend Julie (originally played by Kellie Bright). Their goal is to generate laughs by frequently dropping the words “punani” and “gaylord” while duping MAGA guys, a DEI consultant, some “liberal warriors,” a sweetly friendly liquor store clerk, a TV producer, a real estate agent and Newt Gingrich, among others. Notably, he doesn’t hook a Rudy Giuliani-sized whale this time, but you can’t win the Super Bowl every season, can you?
The conceit is, Ali G, long past the success of his HBO series, is broke, which complicates the fact that Julie, his longtime on-again/off-again, is eight months pregnant (he thought she was just bloated with gas). Pressured to drum up some cash, he pawns an old fax machine that spits out a multimillion-dollar HBO contract renewal. So he and Julie move to America so they can remorselessly f— with the aforementioned people as they pursue fame and fortune.
Once the shockingly dense duo realize the contract is long-expired, they migrate their nonsense to social media, where Cain-N’Degeocello targets him to be the next cancel-culture victim. Cain-N’Degeocello hires Morad to combat the “culturally appropriating terrorist” Ali G, so Morad recruits some anti-immigration MAGA dopes to prevent Julie’s baby from being born in the U.S. Meanwhile, Ali G dupes a TV producer into making The Free Speech Show, which is right in all the wrong ways. Politically right, that is.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Within Cohen’s filmography, Who Iz I? isn’t as comedically potent as the Borats, so it exists somewhere in the middling Bruno range, above the dud that was The Dictator.
Performance Worth Watching: I don’t think we learn the liquor store guy’s name, but his advice to Ali G on raising a child is remarkably sweet.
Sex And Skin: Does MAGA guys wearing fake butts with a gun in the butthole triggered by yanking on a prosthetic wang count? Or the fully prosthetic birth scene?
Our Take: Will exposing racism and hypocrisy ever not be funny? As ever, Cohen’s antics are hit-and-miss, but the underlying ideas — punking those who deserve it, poking fun at well-meaning ideologues and generally lampooning extremity — are sound. I venture to say that those who are overly critical of Cohen’s multi-layered meta-methods may be overthinking things a bit. The comic knows that comedy has power, that jokes can function in the service of salient cultural criticism, and, admirably, he goes very hard for the joke.
Whether Who Iz I? makes any currently relevant points is, well, beside the point. Cohen may not be doing anything new — again, he’s been doing this shtick for a quarter-century — but the movie is at the very least a reminder that shitty ideologies will never go away. The battle rages on. And part of surviving the battle is laughing to relieve tension, and this revival of Ali G is baseline amusing, and only occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, although the latter happens when it counts, during the audacious climactic sequence. Cohen still riles controversy, and it’s quieter than before; he wields a blade dulled a bit by time, but it’s still effectively a blade.
Our Call: Ali G: Who Iz I? is a solid outing for Cohen, and perfect for the streaming era — you can just skip through the bits that don’t click. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
