‘Ali G: Who Iz I?’ Review: Sacha Baron Cohen Brings Back His Cretinous Fake OG Talk-Show Host, Only Now Ali G Is the Film’s ‘Political’ Subject. A Mistake, Innit?

Oct 22, 2026 8:00am PT ‘Ali G: Who Iz I?’ Review: Sacha Baron Cohen Brings Back His Cretinous Fake OG Talk-Show Host, Only Now Ali G Is the Film’s ‘Political’ Subject. A Mistake, Innit?

Baron Cohen plays Ali G and two other characters in what feels like his overblown version of a "Saturday Night Live" movie.

By Owen Gleiberman

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Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

@OwenGleiberman

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• Comments

Back in the day (as he would have put it), Ali G was my favorite Sacha Baron Cohen character. In the ’90s and early 2000s, there was something exquisitely daft about his track suit and do-rag wave cap, his “street” Cockney Jafaican patois, his insanely stunted worldview and brain-dead malapropisms (“Does you think that men should marry only one woman? Does you believe in mahogany?”), and in the more than slightly absurd Method commitment with which Baron Cohen immersed himself in the character.

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