system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: "Borat 2" was a poor-quality sequel

To begin this post, I think it's important to first look at what made "Borat" such a great film in the first place:

1. **"Borat" was, fundamentally, a film about the character Borat.** "Borat" is such a great movie because Borat is such an entertaining character to watch. Visually, Borat is tall, gangly, and stands out from the crowd with his bushy moustache and intense gaze. Personality-wise, he is energetic, naive, simple-minded, and has no sense of shame or embarrassment. As the story unfolds we also learn that he is racist, misogynist, and pretty much any other bad "ist" that you can name. And yet despite all of these negative opinions / beliefs Borat holds, we still love him anyways and root for him (amazingly).
2. **All of the (fictional) characters in "Borat" are undeniably human.** For all of the film's outlandish moments and grotesque extremes, we the audience still fundamentally connect with all of the plot's fictional characters on a personal level. We see our own humanity reflected in their hopes and dreams, their fears, their conflicts, and their romances. Friends fight and then reconcile (Borat and Azamat). Strangers meet and then fall in love (Borat and Luenell). These emotional connections serve to "ground" the viewers and provide a backdrop against which all of the comedy can unfold.
3. **A large portion of the humour in "Borat" is the mockery of "inferior" cultures.** Borat has lived his entire life inside a comically-exaggerated primitive and regressive society, "Kazakhstan", which is all he's ever known. When we tour his home village, we laugh at the absurdity that such an obviously-harmful culture could ever exist. This laughter also comes with a feeling of moral superiority, as we thank our lucky stars that we don't ourselves live in such a barbaric culture. This last point will prove an important groundwork for the film to build on later.
4. **The next obvious part of the humour in "Borat" is watching confused Westerners experience culture shock while trying to interact with the character Borat.** This is probably the most memorable aspect of the film's comedy. However, it's important to point out that most of Borat's funniest interactions actually involve regular, friendly citizens who are earnestly trying their best to be welcoming and accepting of a stranger from another culture. It's this precise dynamic that makes it so funny when the interactions become awkward or go off the rails.
5. **Another famous running thread in "Borat" is the shock at discovering that some (many?) Westerners actually share Borat's harmful beliefs.** This last thread too is one of the most famous aspects of the original film. And the audience, having been lead into a false sense of moral superiority at the start of the film, is now shocked to discover that real-life Western society shares many of the same societal ills which they so mocked at the start of the film.

\*phew\* Coming up with the above list was the hard part! Now for the easy part:

Why "Borat 2" failed as a sequel:

1. **We no longer get to watch Borat.** Aside from sharing screen time with a new co-star, the character Borat actually appears very little in the sequel. Predictably, due to the success of the original film, today nearly all of the United States now recognizes Borat when he's out in public. This forced the story-writers to make Borat don various disguises, alter his voice, and downplay all of his overt personality traits so that Americans would no longer recognize him as Borat. Unfortunately, this also means that we the audience are no longer really watching the character Borat anymore.
2. **The colourful and hilarious supporting characters are missing.** Azamat and Luenell were both integral parts of the original movie's storyline and comedic value. Their characters were written out of the sequel's plot in a slapdash manner, and no new secondary characters were brought in to fill the void left by their absence.
3. **The co-star of "Borat 2" is neither funny nor entertaining.** This point alone really deserves its own post, as there's a lot to say on this topic, much of which extends into hot button topics like equality and feminism. But in short, there are many problems with Tutar's character in the sequel: bad acting, bad writing, poor character development, no clear motivations, no human connection with the audience, etc. Additionally, it seems like we are supposed to laugh at the idea of a young girl being raised in a sex-shaming, infantilizing, oppressive culture. But this feels cruel, and instead we just feel sorry for her character (as does Jeanise the real-life babysitter).

...actually, at this point in the post I'm so bored with the rest of "Borat 2" that I don't have to energy to continue picking apart the exact ways in which it failed to deliver.

On that note, change my view!
gpt
I think you overestimate how much of the point of Borat was laughing at Borat himself. Sacha Baron Cohen has said that the real comedy of his characters comes from the absurdity that anyone could believe they're real people and what people are willing to reveal about themselves when you use the classic agree and amplify approach. For example, getting a room full of people to sing "Throw the Jew down the well" is quintessential Borat, and the second movie is full of that kind of humor.