Customer Reviews

Da Ali G Show - The Complete First Season

5 star:		(54)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The jokes in Ali G. interviewing various American figures are really based on the humor in these people being so detached from youth culture that they think he is possibly serious (even when asking the most ridiculous questions) and possibly really does have a show that uses hip-hop jargon to explain politics and world events to da youth. Correspondingly, most of his best interview segments happen with older people, or people from rural areas.

The actor's particulaur genuis is his ability to keep a straight face after having asked the most totally ridiculous question, or said the most ridiculous and vulgar thing, possible. No small acheievement.

The humor in the Borat character, a Middle-Eastern man visiting and touring America for his program (beamed back to Khazakstan television) is based on the duality between Borat's polite, civilized manner and the brutal misogyny and racism that lies within his mindset and his culture, which he pleasantly verbalizes in his broken English.

The humor in the Bruno character is rather simple. He consistently and persistently chooses to believe that all men are homosexuals. It can be rather funny.

On the whole, hilarious.

I was fortunate enough to be introduced to Ali G during his American run on HBO last year by a friend of mine and I have to say that he is one of the funniest people in the business. He's not a stand-up comedian that somehow made the transition to his own show, he is a comedic actor, fully embracing each character he portrays and making each one funny in their own distinct way. Honestly, the time I've spent watching his show is probably the hardest i've laughed in a long time. Not only is Sacha perfect in each of his roles but whoever produces the show is a genius as well, placing the characters into awkward situations with hilarious consequences and somehow getting really famous people to be interviewed and then almost always embarassed by Ali.

To put it simply, this show utilizes every type of humor there is and does it very well, Sacha is extremely talented and funny and I promise you won't be disappointed if you give it a try.

(...).

I am often very ambidexerous on my reviews pointing out both what I like and (on the other hand) what I do not like about a certain product. However, with Da Ali G Show, I have to un ambiguously say that I have no qualms about buying the DVD.

If you have not heard about Ali G (Sacha Baron Cohen), here is the basic rundown. The show is broken down into three concepts following three personas: (1) Hip-hop British interviewer Ali G., (2) Kazikstani reporter apparently stuck in the 70's Borat, and (3) German fashion club-kid Bruno. The general M.O. is to find unsuspecting interviewees from areas ranging from entertainment to religion to politics. The interviews seem to go smoothly, lulling the interviewee into a false comfort. Then, the interviews veer into absurd directions to see how far the interviewers can be taken off course before pulling the plug. Granted, the concept does not sound all that interesting, the execution is brilliant.

The result is getting to see a range of the absurd from Edwin Meese and Boutros Boutros Gali attempt (rather unsuccessfully) to rap to a debate about religion which degenerates into an arguement about which of the panel members cloged the backstage toilet.

If you cannot tell from the foregoing description, let me emphasize this point (with all-caps no less):

THIS DVD IS NOT FOR EVERYONE!!

Many people will not find this schtick funny. It relies heavily on satire as well as somewhat juvenille humor. If this is not your cup of tea, I can definitely understand and would not recommend it to you.

Given that, however, I found it very funny and was glad that I bought it.

Literally. I've never in my life laughed as consistently hard as I did watching this show. Simply put Sasha Baron Cohen is a comedic genius. He knows exactly how to manipulate people to get the desired reactions that he wants. Da Ali G character is so ingenious and yet so simple, an english baller with all the street vernacular and the IQ of a rock. One of the funniest scenes from the 1st season has to be when Ali G visits the United Nations and asks the former chief "So, is Disney World part of the United Nations?" The man answers "No, Disney World is not a state, it has characters and nothing to do with politics." Ali G replies "Well some of dem characters are like political...you know what I'm sayin'." Borat's guide to America is consistently the funniest part of Da Ali G show. Here Sasha portrays a television reporter from Kazikastan(sp?) who has absolutely no shame or clue about American culture and customs. The two funniest parts with Borat have to be when he goes to visit the minor league baseball team and his dinner with a group of refined older people. During that dinner he leans over to a woman who is like 90 and says "I had sex last night...it was good." Bruno is Sasha's gay fashion reporter who stirs up trouble everywhere he goes. Overall, this show is pure genius and so unbelievably funny that you will hurt from laughter. This is a MUST-OWN for any fan of the comedy genre. Highest Recommendation.

The best reason to buy these DVDs is because you can watch the show over and over again and enjoy each viewing as much as the original. It's not like these are gonna sit on your shelf forever like most shows or movies would. Plus people will be borrowing them all the time.

I won't talk too much about the show other than to say it's extremely hilarious. The DVDs themselves do not have too much additional stuff, which was somewaht dissapointing. There were a couple extra scenes that were funny but I can see why they were cut out of the show. The voice over narration is pretty bad. Sacha was okay but not very funny and the other guy was[...]. The only good part of the narration was how Sacha described how he meets, in character of course, each guest before each interview and acts like a complete idiot who has no idea what he is doing, which makes it more understandable how these fools can put up with him for so long and actually take him seriously.

Persoanlly, I wish their were more deleted scenes, there must be more stuff out there. It would have been great if they put some of his old british material on there but maybe they are planning to release all that stuff sometime.

Best parts -- Philly police academy and Ali G shopping his TV show to the networks. Also the sex roundtable and every other scene contained on these 2 DVDs. This guy is the funniest guy in the business!!

Big up to you! Be checkin out my main man Ali G; the most bestest, for real, most wicked series to be on the telly, and it's going westside to DVD!

Finally! Da Ali G Show (huge in the UK) ran six episodes on HBO a while back, then disappeared. Sacha Baron Cohen's three characters-Ali G the "hip-hop journalist", Borat the Kazakhstani traveler & Bruno, the Austrian fashion reporter-deliver an uproarious crazy satire. This outrageous show really flew under the radar the first time around in the U.S.A. Such a brilliant parody, he's fooled the best: Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich and Buzz Aldrin to name a few.

I've even heard that this DVD coincides with a new season this summer.

So check it and recognize!

Encountering Sasha Baron Cohen's alter-egos for the first time is like going into zero-gravity. Everything feels weird and unnatural and it's not clear whether it's funny or not. But after an episode or two, the joy of weightlessness absolutely gives rise to laughter and a wicked delight.

I came across "Da Ali G Show" six weeks ago on Comcast's new "On Demand" feature. All six episodes from his first HBO season were available and I watched them in quick succession. By the third episode, I was delerious. As soon as I finished this 3-hour-long marathon, I began galvanizing my friends to come and watch them with me. On second and third viewings, I laughed even harder. Most of my friends were in an uproar, but one or two seemed to be offended by it and wouldn't watch it anymore.

So, when HBO began the show's second season last month, I was all primed. Five of this year's six episodes have aired by now. I've seen them all, more than once, and guess what? I'm laughing less and less. I'm grinning. I'm waiting to explode into gales of laughter. It just isn't happening.

So...there's some sort of short shelf life to this show. Part of it is that Sasha will have a tougher time to snatch interviewees "off guard" as time goes by. But, for me as a dedicated "fan", it also seems tougher for him to amuse me as much as he did when I first "discovered" him.

Sasha, I think, will have to create new characters to recapture in me (and the unsuspecting) his original impact.

That first "US and A" season, now available on DVD, is one I'll definitely buy. I highly recommend it.

But this is the closest I've found in comedy to hard drugs--the first time is the best. That's not true with other comics' work--Carlin's stand-up show "You Are All Diseased" and the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy, for example, still make me laugh out loud after dozens of viewings. In comparison, I don't think "Ali G" will survive much longer as a character.

Sascha Cohen is a comic genius. His three personas on "Da Ali G Show" combine side-splitting humor with penetrating insight into our peculiar culture. When he is in character as Borat, the phony "journalist" from the former Soviet Union, he is able to say things that fly in the face of what we consider acceptable and get away with it (mostly).

His is perhaps the best comedy available today.

My first exposure to Ali G happenend one night watching the Conan Obrien show. He had, as his guest, Borat form the Ali G show. I was like what the F%*k is this???? Conan was laughing his a$$ off and Borat was just as serious as ever. I thought that it was a skit for the show. At the end of the interview Conan plugged the Ali G Show. Being in a hotel at the time I looked at the little HBO TV guide, and saw that the Ali G show was on the folowing night. Well safe to say I was blown away at the crazyness of this fine program. I can't decide which chacter Borat, or Bruno I like better. The Ali G chacter can get to be a little too much, but he is still pretty funny. I think that if you buy this you will think that it is pretty damn funny.

If you've watched the UK show, you've seen a lot of these skits, he just redoes them with Americans as the victems. That's not to say they aren't funny, but during the skit introductions you get the feeling Sasha feels he has to explain his humor to dumb Americans.

All that being said, this is a great season. I don't want to give anything away, I'll just say one of the funniest skits is when he goes to the police academy...

For those that have never seen any of Sasha Cohen's comedy I'll give you the basic idea. Sasha dresses up like one of three characters and interviews people. These people don't realize he is a "character" and think they are doing a serious interview.

Sounds simple, except his characters say the most outragious things and ask the most inappropriate questions. Basically he acts like an idiot and shows that even the smartest people can be pretty stupid when interacting with a moron. He also enjoys makes fun of racists and religious nutjobs by simply letting them speak.

One of my favourite sections is where he interviews a panel of experts and asks insane questions and makes hilarious comments like;
"Me mate Dave ain't got no techmology, if you don't belief me, go check out 'is web site..."
"You's two is lesbians? Respec... I's got some of yo'r videos."
"Why is it da responsabilitys of da Youth in Asia ta kill old people?"

Sasha's three characters are:
Ali G, a Wigger from the mean streets of Stains (think Jamie Kennedy's character from "Malibu's Most Wanted"). His mangling of the English language is part of the joke. Ali G, "Does you tink da medias 'as changed since you been in it." Andy Rooney, "Do you think the media.... it's DO YOU THINK..."

This character is probably people's favourite as he is the most outragous and he has all the catch phrases like, "Respec", "Booyakasha", "That's a bit racialist, innit?", etc.

Borat, an anti-semitic reporter from Kazakhstan who's complete lack of any decorum is outragiously funny (he tries to defecate in a field at a fox hunt in one of his UK shows). He's not so much an idiot as he is ignorant. This character works best in the US I think because he gets away with so much because people think he is from some third world country and don't know how to tell him he shouldn't be doing this or that.

Bruno, super-gay fashion nazi TV reporter from Austria is great at showing how idiotic people in fasion are. He has these fashion simpletons contradicting themselves from one sentence to the next. He also goes out in the "street" and inverviews homophobes which can be truly amusing, to paraphrase;
Bruno: "So, tell me, why are guns so popular now wis da gay men?"
Redneck Gunshow attendee: "I don't know. I don't know no gays, and I'm not gay. And if you call me gay one more time I'm going to kick your butt."