It’s rude. It’s crude. It is in quite deplorable taste. All these strictures and more were simmering away in my head as I sat down to watch this feature-length expansion of Sacha Baron Cohen’s legendary TV comic invention, Ali G.
It being traditional to disparage crossover attempts at the big time from our home-grown stars, I was all ready with put-downs mentioning the On the Buses movie. The presence in the cast of stately thesps such as Michael Gambon and Charles Dance was moreover to be the premise of a withering comparison to the Spice Girls film. I had a particularly devastating question lined up about why, oh why, the film does material about gays but not Jews. And yet, and yet … just as I was brooding on these deconstructive points, I was distracted by big laughs from the auditorium. Who is that giggling at these appallingly vulgar gags? Oh. It’s, er, me.
What can I say? Ali G Indahouse will never come up to the sublime standard of his first video compilation, Ali G Innit, the series of TV interviews that made household names of Sue Romsey of Sinn Fein and Major-General Ken Perkins of the British army — really, that deserved a theatrical release. The hoax aspect is irreversibly lost, but this movie does not make the mistake of the follow-up series, Da Ali G Show, and remove our hero from the streets of Staines. It puts him back in the ‘hood — although Baron Cohen and co-writer Dan Mazer are still under the impression that Staines is in Berkshire, thus grievously dissing Middlesex.
Anyway, Ali is hanging with his homiez from the home-countiez, as is his wont, and pursuing a fraught romantic relationship with “his Julie” (Kellie Bright), when scheming politico Charles Dance inveigles him into standing at the Staines by-election (“But me is not bi”), his machiavellian plan being that the inevitable fiasco will destabilise his party leader Michael Gambon and catapult him to power. But Ali’s natural affinity for the people and his marvellous propensity for keeping it real in the ghetto secures him a sensational victory, witnessed by media pundits.
Ali G has evidently learned little or nothing from the legendary telling-off he received from Tony Benn about his offensive attitude. In the barrio of Compton, a ferocious Latino gangsta is yelling at his “ho’s”. Ali cruises up in an absurdly flash convertible, with air-cushioned suspension, and delivers the following rebuke: “Dat is a very sexist way to talk about these bitches.”
The film is stuffed with very, very broad material. Some of the lines get groans; some are gross and funny, some gross and unfunny; some fall flat. But I did find myself laughing out loud, a guilty pleasure I remember from watching Kentucky Fried Movie for the first time, and somehow it’s the most self-consciously regressive playground humour that works the best. Ali and his friends throw themselves on top of a villain, after Ali shouts: “Bundle!” — something that will always make me laugh. And when he is invited into cabinet by the prime minister and wants to make a point, he does so by sticking his hand in the air and holding his elbow with the other hand bent over his head, like a desperately eager 10-year-old.
There is some outrageous comic business with Ali’s complex and always evolving grasp of street language. When they have to blow a safe, someone says: “Yeah, safe, man, yeah.” “No, no, it’s the safe.” “Yeah, cool, safe, whatever.” “No, no …” This goes on for quite some time. And then, when every second counts, Ali sends a text message to an ally that is so impenetrable he has to go round and see him personally and spend about a minute and a half decoding his hip text-message patois.
Most tellingly, a flashback to when Ali first met Julie at a disco reveals that he was once some sort of uncool sub-Robert Smith demi-Goth: although the writers can’t quite bring themselves to break the spell still further by making him speak like a middle-class white man. Baron Cohen and Mazer keep their script assiduously and densely packed with gags, and director Mark Mylod — a bright up-and-comer from TV making his feature debut — shows a sure hand, whisking the action from South Central Los Angeles to Leacroft Park to Westminster.
It’s not for everyone of course, though Baron Cohen is entitled to ask some of his critics: “Is it cos I is British?” If it was all by Americans in American accents I suspect it would benefit from our cultural cringe to the Farrelly brothers, etc: an attitude that gets lenient treatment for Road Trip III and American Pie VIII. Interestingly, there is every sign that American audiences themselves do not have our concern that Ali G is becoming the thing he satirises. They see immediately that he is an unconvincing limey who doesn’t look an echt gangsta: and they get the joke.
This is an entertaining venture with energy, fun and immature bad taste in abundance. Working Title films and producers Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan may have a bona fide non-Richard Curtis-scripted commercial hit on their hands.