More than a quarter of a century after he first sat bewildered politicians down for some of the most excruciating interviews in British television, Ali G is back in his yellow-tinted glasses and his enormous puffer jacket. Staines’ most famous son is broke, forgotten and about to become a father, and he has decided that America is the place to get his career back.
Ali G: Who Iz I? had just one weekend in UK cinemas before landing on Prime Video on Wednesday 28 October, and it arrives carrying a very modern question: does a character built to expose prejudice still work in an age that argues about everything? Sacha Baron Cohen clearly thinks so. The film he has made is loud, crude and occasionally very funny, but it spends so long explaining itself that the joke rarely gets the chance to breathe.
Ali G still knows how to make a room go quiet. The problem is that the film keeps stopping to tell us why that is funny.
Movie at a Glance
- UK availability: Streaming on Prime Video from Wednesday 28 October 2026, included with a Prime subscription
- UK cinema release: Friday 23 October 2026, for a limited run
- US availability: Streaming on Prime Video from 28 October 2026
- Director: Sacha Baron Cohen
- Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen and Morgana Robinson
- UK certificate: 15 (strong sex references, crude humour, language, discrimination)
- Runtime: 89 minutes
- Genre: Mockumentary comedy
- Studio: Amazon MGM Studios
Viewer Match
- Best for: Long-time fans of Da Ali G Show and Borat who want one more round of hidden-camera mischief.
- Maybe skip if: You found the character tired twenty years ago, or very crude, deliberately offensive humour is not your idea of a night in.
- Mood and pace: Brash, scattershot and fast, with big laughs and long flat stretches in roughly equal measure.
- Cinema or streaming? Streaming, with friends who already know the character. It is included with Prime, so the risk is only your evening.
- Spoiler level: Spoiler-free: we don’t name the famous faces who get caught out.
Back From Staines, Short of Cash
The set-up is pure Ali G. After two decades of doing very little, he discovers that his long-suffering girlfriend Julie is eight months pregnant. With another mouth to feed, he heads to America to reclaim the fame he is sure he still deserves, only to find that the world has moved on without him. Morgana Robinson takes over as Julie, and she is a genuinely funny sparring partner: brassy, quick and much sharper than the man she is stuck with.
Unlike Ali G Indahouse, which was a fully scripted comedy, this is a return to the hidden-camera style of the television series. A loose story links a run of real encounters with members of the public and a handful of better-known figures, some of whom clearly have no idea who they are talking to. When it works, it works as it always did: Ali G says something outrageous, and the person opposite him reveals a little more of themselves than they meant to.
Old Friends in New Disguises
Baron Cohen also brings back two characters from his 2018 series Who Is America?: the hard-man security expert Erran Morad and the painfully earnest academic Dr Nira Cain-N’Degeocello, who sets out to have Ali G cancelled for cultural appropriation. It is a clever way of putting the long-running criticism of the character into the film itself, and some of the best scenes come from watching very confident people agree with obviously terrible ideas.
The prosthetics are excellent, and Baron Cohen’s nerve remains astonishing. He commits to every set-up, however grim, and a sequence with a group of hardline anti-immigration campaigners is as uncomfortable as anything he has filmed. Yet there is no single, jaw-dropping encounter to match the very best moments of the Borat films, and the targets this time often feel easier.
A Joke That Keeps Explaining Itself
The biggest problem is one the film creates for itself. It repeatedly stops to make sure we know who is in on the joke and who is not, at the start, at the end and even in the middle. That may be understandable for a new audience who never saw the original series, but it drains the danger out of the pranks. Hidden-camera comedy needs a sense that anything could happen, and here we are too often told in advance.
The scripted story, meanwhile, is thin and leans hard on the same handful of crude jokes. Even at under an hour and a half, the middle sags. There are big laughs here, and some properly cringe-making moments, but they come in bursts rather than building into the kind of comic momentum that made the character a sensation.
Is Ali G Still Relevant?
That question hangs over the whole film, and Baron Cohen seems to know it. Who Iz I? wants to be both a comeback and a defence of the character, a film about cancel culture and free speech as well as a string of pranks. It is most enjoyable when it forgets the argument and simply lets Ali G loose on someone who should know better. Those moments are worth seeing. The rest feels like a reunion that has gone on a little too long.
Spoiler-Free Verdict
Ali G: Who Iz I? has some brilliant moments of hidden-camera nerve and a lively turn from Morgana Robinson, but it spends too much time explaining the joke and too little time letting it land.
- Performances: 6.5/10
- Direction: 5.5/10
- Screenplay: 4.5/10
- Score: 5/10
- Cinematography: 5/10
- Entertainment Value: 6/10
- Overall score: 5.5/10
Star rating: 2.5/5
Verdict badge: Stream It
One-line verdict: Booyakasha, but only just: a patchy comeback with enough big laughs for fans to stream at home.
Watch the Official Trailer
See Ali G and Julie head for America in the official trailer.
We first looked at the film in our Ali G: Who Iz I? Official Trailer 2 Trailer Drop, and it was part of our Weekly Cinema Pack for 23 October. For everything else arriving on the big platforms this week, see our Weekly Streaming Highlights.
Is Ali G still funny in 2026, or has his time been and gone? Share your spoiler-free reaction to Ali G: Who Iz I?