Ali G Is Back — Complete With Gay Jokes

Comedy legend Sacha Baron Cohen (55) has always been a politically engaged filmmaker. His most recent provocation to the United States came in 2020 with “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” in which he held up a mirror to the country by trying to offer then–Vice President Mike Pence his daughter Tutar (Maria Bakalova, 30) as a bride. The mockumentary earned two Oscar nominations, including one for Bakalova.

His alter ego Ali G, made famous in the early 2000s through “Da Ali G Show” and the feature film “Ali G in da House,” initially seemed destined for retirement. Yet the current political-cultural climate of Western societies left the comedian with little choice but to pull Ali G out of mothballs, he told The Hollywood Reporter.

“Because I’m deeply afraid of where our society is heading—and my way of reacting to it is comedy,” he explained about his decision to revive Ali. He said he wanted to “show extremism on both sides of the political spectrum” and “the danger of violence that cloaks itself in moral superiority.”

Directorial Debut of Sacha Baron Cohen

The result is a roughly 90-minute comedy film, indeed Sacha Baron Cohen’s directorial debut, which in many ways nods to what longtime fans and viewers of the comedian already know. Ali G leads a quiet life in England, living with his pregnant girlfriend Julie (Morgana Robinson, 44) in his late grandmother’s flat in Surrey.

But then he finds an old fax from HBO offering to relaunch “Ali G Show.” He promptly heads to the United States with the pregnant Julie—only to discover that the offer from HBO has been void for 22 years.

Without a job or a stable income, Ali G decides to become a TikTok star. Along the way, he crowdsources a roster of famous and lesser-known personalities as content creators in front of his microphone.

The Film’s Central Theme: The Problems Surrounding Ali G

That humor didn’t land with everyone. Several commentators felt Cohen was reviving a 2026-era relic in Ali G. The film even foregrounds this critique: Ali G is pursued by a new nemesis also played by Cohen—Nira Cain-N’Degeocello, a hyper-progressive professor of Gender Studies who intends to hold Ali accountable for decades of “cultural appropriation.”

Frivolous jokes about gay sex

The film also takes aim at queer themes—in true Baron Cohen fashion. In an interview with the Guardian delivered entirely in his Ali G persona, the character claims to have become “woke” and thus inserted a nude male buttocks shot into the film “to please the LGBTQ community.” At another point in the interview, he confuses homosexuals with Homo sapiens: he has nothing against them, he’s just not one himself.

In film criticism, this approach to humor was not well received. The Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail deemed it a low point for the mockumentary, pointing to a further Baron Cohen persona—a former Mossad agent—whose existence seems to be solely for tired jokes about gay sex and for lines about “genocide.” Variety likewise criticized the film for mainly riding a parody of “wokeness” and missing its broader aim.

This set of criticisms about Cohen’s handling of queer themes isn’t new: his gay character Brüno stirred controversy in 2009 when GLAAD called the film partly problematic and partly offensive (TheColu.mn reported). Ali G: Who Iz I? has been playing in select German cinemas since October 23. (spot)