Borat Sagdiyev’s prankster reputation precedes him. Fourteen years since Sacha Baron Cohen introduced the Kazakhstani mischief maker and his mankini in the massively successful, Oscar-nominated Borat, even the vaguely pop culture-aware can recognize his mustachioed visage, or catch a “Very nice!” reference. So who’s still getting pranked by Borat, or any Cohen character who resembles him at this point? The President’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, that’s who.
In Rudy’s defense, he isn’t fooled by Borat during the jaw-dropping near-climax to sequel Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (★★★★☆). Instead, the former mayor of New York is taken by Cohen in another disguise, and by the actor-comedian’s main accomplice in the film, Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova, playing Borat’s daughter Tutar pretending to be a Russian reporter. So it doesn’t take a spy agency or foreign government to catch Trump’s consigliere with his hands down his pants inside a hotel room with an attractive Russian he’s never met. Just two committed comedians and a well-prepared crew get the job done, and that’s not even this film’s most audacious stunt.
Borat also crashes a speech by Mike Pence at the Conservative Political Action Conference, while wearing a well-chosen disguise. Directed by Jason Woliner (making his feature debut, after cutting his teeth on TV comedies like What We Do in the Shadows), the film addresses the obstacle of Borat’s fame with humor, ingenuity, and by relying on the rapid-fire talents of Bakalova. She carries much of the bizarre, yet politically astute plot about Borat trying to impress Trump by delivering a gift to “Vice-Pussy-grabber” Pence. A formidable one-two punch, Bakalova and Cohen both can go big or play it straight, depending on the situation, and their comic rhythm develops into a surprisingly sweet father-daughter match as they prank their way across America, from a debutante ball to a Republican Women’s Club meeting.
Borat and Tutar even venture to a March for Our Rights anti-mask rally, stepping right into 2020 existence. The film and its humor reside on a razor-thin line between staged and spontaneous, faked and for-real. It’s eerie when it’s not hilarious, and sometimes it’s both. Borat himself, the naïve and offensive, wild-and-crazy guy in the boxy, gray suit still resides on that line, and Cohen mines new layers of humanity from the character in his fumbling attempts to better understand his daughter. His trusted daughter-raising manual by the Kazakhstan Ministry of Agriculture and Wildlife only gets him so far.
But again, Borat’s too famous to fool all of the people, all of the time, so he’s often buried beneath additional layers of fake hair and padding. His personality is missed. Also missing much of the time is the element of surprise. Borat’s first trip to America, and the decade-and-a-half of cringe comedy since, have primed the audience to anticipate exactly where his pranks are headed.
Yet, somehow unsuspecting innocents, and some who have it coming, are drawn eagerly into embarrassing themselves, or exposing themselves for our entertainment. And even when the movie signals where it’s going — when Borat and Tutar decide to bust out a traditional fertility dance at the deb ball, for example — Cohen and Bakalova make each set-piece count by leaving it all on the floor.
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is available for streaming on Amazon Prime. Visitwww.amazon.com.
There isn't a great deal of originality in Jamie Wax's new play, Call Me Izzy, but it may well mark the first time a white porcelain toilet has been featured so prominently in a Broadway production.
The 90-minute, one-woman show opens in the bathroom of a mobile home, situated in a trailer park in rural Louisiana, where Isabelle "Izzy" Scutley (Jean Smart, Hacks) spends much of her time, scribbling on sheets of toilet paper with a mascara pen. Poetically, she describes the various shades of blue produced by the disinfectant tablets that she gingerly drops in the tank. To her, they are beautiful. To her husband, Ferd, not so much.
A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a directive from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that prohibits transgender and nonbinary individuals from obtaining passports reflecting their gender identities.
Rubio's directive, issued in January, had instructed State Department staff to freeze all applications for passports with "X" gender markers or applications requesting changes to gender markers on existing passports.
Rubio also directed his subordinate to enforce a section of the Immigration and Nationalist Act that allows the United States to refuse entry to any visa applicant who commits identity fraud or misrepresents who they are, with particular focus on transgender athletes from foreign countries.
The U.S. Senate parliamentarian blocked several provisions in President Donald Trump's proposed tax and budget bill, including a transgender health care ban that would have prohibited federal funds from covering gender-affirming care.
The provision seeks to block transgender people of all ages -- including adults -- from accessing transition-related care by banning Medicaid, ACA marketplace plans, and the Children's Health Insurance Program from covering the cost.
But Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, who is tasked offering nonpartisan advice to federal lawmakers on Senate rules, declared that the proposed transgender health care ban violates the Byrd Rule, which requires reconciliation bills -- those cobbled together to resolve differences between House and Senate versions -- to only contain provisions that impact the budget or spending, and not any "extraneous" matters.
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