Twenty years is a long time to stay on the sofa, but Ali G has always been a man of commitment. When we last left Sacha Baron Cohen's tracksuit-wearing, linguistics-mangling icon of Staines, he was a globe-trotting interviewer with a vocabulary all his own and a batty that was, by all accounts, firmly parked on the cushions. Now, two decades of what the character himself describes as "chillin', tokin' and bonin'" later, the man born Alistair Leslie Graham is back in a sequel with a plot twist that would rattle even the most seasoned member of the West Staines Massiv.
As the film opens, Ali discovers that his long-suffering girlfriend Julie, played by Morgana Robinson, is eight months pregnant. Eight months. Which means the baby is arriving imminently, and Ali has had roughly two decades of notice he apparently failed to notice at all. The revelation hits him like a bus he didn't see coming because he was too busy asking someone whether robots have feelings. Suddenly faced with an extra mouth to feed, he does something truly unprecedented in his personal history: he gets off his batty and heads to America to reclaim his former glory.
What follows, per the film's synopsis, is a collision between mid-aughts celebrity nostalgia and something considerably darker. Ali soon encounters adversaries who will ultimately threaten his and his child's very existence. That's a dramatic escalation for a comedy that began with a man asking a politician deeply inappropriate questions in rhyming slang, but Baron Cohen has always enjoyed smuggling real menace into his silliness. The Borat films pulled off the same trick, and the synopsis suggests this one isn't content to coast on wobbly hand gestures and mispronounced vocabulary alone.
Baron Cohen is pulling triple duty here, playing Ali G alongside two of his other alter egos: Colonel Erran Morad and Dr. Nira Cain-N'Degeocello. Fans of his television work will recognize both, and threading three characters through one story is the kind of logistical circus the actor clearly relishes. He's also directing, which means the chaos is entirely of his own making.
The supporting cast is a proper pop-culture fever dream. Morgana Robinson brings Julie back to the screen as the woman who somehow stuck around for twenty years of nonsense. Clive Russell turns up as Malcolm "Rocky" Atkins. Tiffany Haddish appears as a lab technician, a job title that raises several intriguing questions about what kind of lab and exactly what is being tested. And then there's the parade of people playing themselves: C. Stewart Rodeheaver, Allan Lichtman, George Santos, and DJ Jazzy Jeff. That's a guest list that could only exist in a film where a man in a yellow tracksuit wanders into frame and asks something deeply offensive. George Santos and DJ Jazzy Jeff sharing a call sheet is either the punchline of the century or a sign of the apocalypse, and honestly, it might be both.
DJ Jazzy Jeff's presence feels especially fitting for a character whose entire persona was built on appropriating culture with total, blissful confidence. There's something poetic about the original Fresh Prince DJ standing shoulder to shoulder with the man who once claimed to be the voice of the youth while mangling the English language beyond all recognition.
The film clocks in at a brisk 89 minutes, which is the right length for this kind of high-energy absurdity. Any longer and the joke starts to sag; any shorter and you'd barely get through the introductions. It arrives in theaters on October 22, 2026, and it's rated 6.5 out of 10 on TMDb, which tells you audiences are somewhat split on whether this revival lands.
What's fascinating about revisiting Ali G in 2026 is that the world has changed almost beyond recognition since he first exploded out of Staines. Or has it? The character's whole gimmick was interviewing people who didn't realize they were the butt of the joke. In an era of deepfakes, influencer hustle culture, and politicians broadcasting their own gaffes in real time, the line between satire and documentation has blurred considerably. Maybe Ali G has been here all along, and we just stopped noticing.
The premise, meanwhile, is a sneaky one. Underneath the tracksuit and the gold chains, this is a story about a man finally being forced to grow up because an actual child is on the way. Whether Ali G is capable of maturity is a question only the movie can answer, but the prospect of watching him try is what gives this sequel its real allure. Baron Cohen has always understood that his characters are funniest when they're in over their heads.
So twenty years after the sofa years, Ali G is back where he started: making things awkward for everyone in the room. Only this time, he's got a baby on the way, a passport full of American stamps, and three alter egos to juggle. Something tells us Julie isn't holding her breath.
