Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss
"Who Is America?" Review: Sacha Baron Cohen Plays Dumb In Stupid Spoof Series
0 views
Skip to first unread message
Ubiquitous
Jul 16, 2018, 7:49:03 AM7/16/18
to
When David Nevins called Sacha Baron Cohen “the premier provocateur
of our time” in announcing the new Who Is America? series, the
Showtime boss was certainly honest to a fault. Full of mild shock,
zero awe and a lot of recycled scenarios, the flabby, seven-episode
dupe-the-dimwits endeavor from the once blighting satirist certainly
provokes a great inducement to change the cable channel.
Or to paraphrase a true great provocateur, Johnny Rotten: Boring,
Sasha, boring
Debuting tonight on streaming, online, and On Demand – and on
Showtime proper tomorrow at 7 PM PT – the spoof series starts off
with a quickly irritated Sen. Bernie Sanders being mildly grilled by
a prosthetically enhanced Cohen, who is not that well-disguised as
motorized scooter-bound, Alex Jones wannabe Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr.
of Truthbrary.org.
Though Ali G was genius and Borat was brilliant, the subsequent
offerings leading to Who Is America? intimate that the decline and
fall of the comedy of Sasha Baron Cohen is almost complete with this
pointless and tub-thumping exercise in ritual humiliation.
About as “dangerous” and “cold-blooded,” to quote WiA’s promos, as a
multi-colored inflatable pool unicorn, this series is murky on who
is being more humiliated, Cohen or his patsies. It is, however,
definitive on giving 2016 flick The Brothers Grimsby a worthy rival
for the stupidest thing Cohen has ever conceived.
Look, from about 2000 to 2006, I thought Cohen was one of the
shrewdest and most side-splitting people on the planet. He entangled
the privileged and the powerful in their own ignorance, time and
time again, first as the simple-minded, Staines-representing hip hop
fanatic on Da Ali G Show, then as a clueless Kazakh TV host. Yet
mining the same material and approach over and over between roles in
the likes of Martin Scorsese’s Hugo and the Alice In Wonderland
sequel seriously watered down the whiskey, so to speak.
Now, with the exception of a vey well placed Cardi B reference and a
few other moments in WiA, there just isn’t much of the good stuff
left.
From Sarah Palin to Ted Koppel to failed Alabama Senate candidate
Roy Moore and more, a number of potential Who Is America? targets
have been spewed out in recent days. Some of those Cohen tried to
pillory have clearly never met a camera or a free flight that they
didn’t like, particularly Palin, the 2008 GOP Vice-Presidential
hopeful and sometimes-unscripted TV host. That’s not to mention the
short-term renewal of their expired 15-minutes of fame that a little
feigned outrage can stir up.
Others, like former Veep Dick Cheney, who appears in promos for the
show signing his John Henry to a waterboarding kit that Cohen’s
torture and gun-loving self-professing ex-Mossad member persona
hands him, seem to have stubbornly strolled into the show’s
excruciating leg-hold trap.
However, for the most part, Cohen targets an easily pummeled straw
dogs selection of well-heeled, Donald Trump- supporting and drink-
sipping South Carolinians, gun rights activists like the well-named
Larry Pratt, and pliable SoCal art gallery owners. There’s also the
expected washed-up politicians, talking heads, and reality show
contestants with defecation gags galore, a “Kinder-Guardians” gun-
arming child program, sex with a porpoise and a flag menstruation
anecdote, the latter which the Clinton Foundation are falsely said
to be supporting financially.
Added together, all this finds former clown student Cohen and the
numerous characters he’s created for Who Is America? slithering
further and further down the cultural drainpipe. It might be
shielded under the tattered guise of exploring the American divide,
and it might therefore appeal to some as funny. Also, accepting that
there is at least one mark born every minute, as con-men say, it
might entice others as a necessary shiv to whomever they don’t like
on the political spectrum.
The fact is, Cohen shares with President Trump the ability to sucker
Sarah Palin, and, like the former Celebrity Apprentice host, is all
about playing entirely to his base. Which means the shtick of Who Is
America? is simply to watch stuffed shirts fall over on the banana
peels placed in their self-satisfied way, again and again. Nothing
more, and often less.
Funny once? Totally. Funny over and over and over? Maybe, if the
executions are worthy and the subjects slippery enough, as was often
the case during Cohen’s Ali G and Borat era.
However, funny in 2018? When trolled by the Cohen-played characters
of a right-wing conspiracy theorist, Mossad officer, a self-
loathing, gender-bending, NPR-listening snowflake? Or what about a
British convict just out of the joint wanting to share his bodily
fluids-created art and apparent impersonation of Tom Hardy as
Bronson from the 2008 pic, plus an oil-slick slimy West Coast Euro-
millionaire celeb photographer with charitable desires?
No, that’s not funny or shrewd. That’s just a short play at the
track, as con-men used to say. And, once you get past the sleight-
of-hand and the hype, there’s not much there in Who Is America?, new
or otherwise, that isn’t a con job.
--
Obama’s legacy is President Trump.
of our time” in announcing the new Who Is America? series, the
Showtime boss was certainly honest to a fault. Full of mild shock,
zero awe and a lot of recycled scenarios, the flabby, seven-episode
dupe-the-dimwits endeavor from the once blighting satirist certainly
provokes a great inducement to change the cable channel.
Or to paraphrase a true great provocateur, Johnny Rotten: Boring,
Sasha, boring
Debuting tonight on streaming, online, and On Demand – and on
Showtime proper tomorrow at 7 PM PT – the spoof series starts off
with a quickly irritated Sen. Bernie Sanders being mildly grilled by
a prosthetically enhanced Cohen, who is not that well-disguised as
motorized scooter-bound, Alex Jones wannabe Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr.
of Truthbrary.org.
Though Ali G was genius and Borat was brilliant, the subsequent
offerings leading to Who Is America? intimate that the decline and
fall of the comedy of Sasha Baron Cohen is almost complete with this
pointless and tub-thumping exercise in ritual humiliation.
About as “dangerous” and “cold-blooded,” to quote WiA’s promos, as a
multi-colored inflatable pool unicorn, this series is murky on who
is being more humiliated, Cohen or his patsies. It is, however,
definitive on giving 2016 flick The Brothers Grimsby a worthy rival
for the stupidest thing Cohen has ever conceived.
Look, from about 2000 to 2006, I thought Cohen was one of the
shrewdest and most side-splitting people on the planet. He entangled
the privileged and the powerful in their own ignorance, time and
time again, first as the simple-minded, Staines-representing hip hop
fanatic on Da Ali G Show, then as a clueless Kazakh TV host. Yet
mining the same material and approach over and over between roles in
the likes of Martin Scorsese’s Hugo and the Alice In Wonderland
sequel seriously watered down the whiskey, so to speak.
Now, with the exception of a vey well placed Cardi B reference and a
few other moments in WiA, there just isn’t much of the good stuff
left.
From Sarah Palin to Ted Koppel to failed Alabama Senate candidate
Roy Moore and more, a number of potential Who Is America? targets
have been spewed out in recent days. Some of those Cohen tried to
pillory have clearly never met a camera or a free flight that they
didn’t like, particularly Palin, the 2008 GOP Vice-Presidential
hopeful and sometimes-unscripted TV host. That’s not to mention the
short-term renewal of their expired 15-minutes of fame that a little
feigned outrage can stir up.
Others, like former Veep Dick Cheney, who appears in promos for the
show signing his John Henry to a waterboarding kit that Cohen’s
torture and gun-loving self-professing ex-Mossad member persona
hands him, seem to have stubbornly strolled into the show’s
excruciating leg-hold trap.
However, for the most part, Cohen targets an easily pummeled straw
dogs selection of well-heeled, Donald Trump- supporting and drink-
sipping South Carolinians, gun rights activists like the well-named
Larry Pratt, and pliable SoCal art gallery owners. There’s also the
expected washed-up politicians, talking heads, and reality show
contestants with defecation gags galore, a “Kinder-Guardians” gun-
arming child program, sex with a porpoise and a flag menstruation
anecdote, the latter which the Clinton Foundation are falsely said
to be supporting financially.
Added together, all this finds former clown student Cohen and the
numerous characters he’s created for Who Is America? slithering
further and further down the cultural drainpipe. It might be
shielded under the tattered guise of exploring the American divide,
and it might therefore appeal to some as funny. Also, accepting that
there is at least one mark born every minute, as con-men say, it
might entice others as a necessary shiv to whomever they don’t like
on the political spectrum.
The fact is, Cohen shares with President Trump the ability to sucker
Sarah Palin, and, like the former Celebrity Apprentice host, is all
about playing entirely to his base. Which means the shtick of Who Is
America? is simply to watch stuffed shirts fall over on the banana
peels placed in their self-satisfied way, again and again. Nothing
more, and often less.
Funny once? Totally. Funny over and over and over? Maybe, if the
executions are worthy and the subjects slippery enough, as was often
the case during Cohen’s Ali G and Borat era.
However, funny in 2018? When trolled by the Cohen-played characters
of a right-wing conspiracy theorist, Mossad officer, a self-
loathing, gender-bending, NPR-listening snowflake? Or what about a
British convict just out of the joint wanting to share his bodily
fluids-created art and apparent impersonation of Tom Hardy as
Bronson from the 2008 pic, plus an oil-slick slimy West Coast Euro-
millionaire celeb photographer with charitable desires?
No, that’s not funny or shrewd. That’s just a short play at the
track, as con-men used to say. And, once you get past the sleight-
of-hand and the hype, there’s not much there in Who Is America?, new
or otherwise, that isn’t a con job.
--
Obama’s legacy is President Trump.
alvey
Jul 16, 2018, 4:18:21 PM7/16/18
to
Barry Margolin
Jul 17, 2018, 10:31:32 AM7/17/18
to
In article <1eio9i4ik97wp.1kb17hqnrlev1$.d...@40tude.net>,
--
Barry Margolin
Arlington, MA
alvey <al...@is.invalid> wrote:
> I give up. Why don't you post a link to the original piece?
Are you new here? Ubi always puts the link in the headers.
> I give up. Why don't you post a link to the original piece?
--
Barry Margolin
Arlington, MA
alvey
Jul 17, 2018, 4:31:27 PM7/17/18
to
On Tue, 17 Jul 2018 10:31:31 -0400, Barry Margolin wrote:
> In article <1eio9i4ik97wp.1kb17hqnrlev1$.d...@40tude.net>,
> alvey <al...@is.invalid> wrote:
>
>> I give up. Why don't you post a link to the original piece?
>
> Are you new here? Ubi always puts the link in the headers.
Odd thing to do. Why not just TinyUrl it?
> In article <1eio9i4ik97wp.1kb17hqnrlev1$.d...@40tude.net>,
> alvey <al...@is.invalid> wrote:
>
>> I give up. Why don't you post a link to the original piece?
>
> Are you new here? Ubi always puts the link in the headers.
alvey
0 new messages