Ali G is back in Ali G Who Iz I, ending a 24-year absence from the big screen since Ali G Indahouse. The new film puts him back in front of the camera just as the first trailer has started a fresh argument over whether the character reads as satire or as a racial caricature.
The timing is what makes the return feel so stark. Since Ali G last appeared in a big-screen film, the UK has had nine prime ministers, lived through a global pandemic and seen the rise of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter. Now the character is being pushed again with the same sunglasses, the same swagger and the same Staines-rooted persona that made him a late-1990s and early-2000s fixture.
In the trailer, Ali G turns up in an independent chicken shop in Staines and insists on a string of aliases, including Richard Watkins, Kelvin Matthews and Priyanka Patel. He also goes back to the drawl and the self-mythology that defined him before the long gap, telling the viewer that the world went to crap because there was Covid, wars and Ed Sheeran, and warning that speaking to a Guardian journalist is not a good look for him in the hood.
The sequence leans hard into the old character beats. Ali G says the interview was meant to be for Chicken Shop Date and that it was 90% likely to lead to boning. He says the first time he and me Julie had sex was in the disabled toilets of Egham KFC. He says is footing the bill for the meal. He says a diamond teddy bear was once part of the crown jewels, worn by the queen, RIP, and that a bloke who worked as a dog washer at Windsor palace nicked it and sold it to him for 20K when he was rich.
But the comeback has not landed as a simple nostalgia exercise. The trailer has drawn criticism over the fake dreadlocks, Rastafarian imagery and faux-Jamaican persona, with some viewers saying the character now looks less like a satirical invention and more like an outdated racial caricature. That pushback lands in a different cultural moment from the one that made Ali G famous in the first place, and the contrast is exactly what gives the release its edge.
The film also keeps the character’s old visual language intact. Ali G says he is wearing four watches for different time zones, one for Staines, one for Egham, one for Langley Village and one for Scrotland. He says he has never had dreads and that he wears the Rasta bonnet because that is where he keeps his stash, the ganja, adding that the cops are not allowed to look under it for religious reasons. The trailer also reveals that Ali G is about to become a dad.
For now, the comeback is real and the response is already divided. The trailer has made clear what the film is offering: a direct return to the character’s old world, not a reinvention of it. What remains unanswered is whether the backlash stays at trailer level or follows Ali G Who Iz I all the way to release and reception.
