Yahoo News Who is America? reviews are in
Controversy magnet Sacha Baron Cohen is back with a new politically-charged show Who is America?, but how has it fared in the critical world?
Mixed thoughts are populating the internet, with reviews rolling in following the US airing of its first episode. Below you can find some of the critic's reactions.
"What a pleasant surprise, then, that Who Is America? feels both as richly comic as anything Baron Cohen has done in the decade-plus since Borat and urgently resonant with our own era. The show's format-using four new Baron Cohen personae in order to expose the nature of contemporary American culture-is particularly effective, moving as it does beyond the boldface names who've come forward to say they've been pranked by the comic.
"This is the magic of Baron Cohen at his best: Simultaneously devising bizarre and seemingly impossibly outré bits of social commentary, and knowing the culture well enough to be sure that his targets will be along for the ride. The lengthy 'Kinder-Guardians' segment, culminating as it does in a bizarre pro-toddler-riflery PSA endorsed by Dana Rohrabacher and Trent Lott, is the episode's creative high point."
"Doing what Sacha Baron Cohen is trying to do in this fraught climate is really tricky, and my instinct tells me it won't work more often than it does. Still, as a viewer who senses that the standard attempts to poke fun at our Trumpian political culture already feel played out, I'm intrigued to watch how he navigates this minefield. When Who Is America? is on point, as it is in the 'Kill or Be Killed' segment, it doesn't just remind us that some of our emperors have no clothes. It exposes them for walking around naked with no sense of shame whatsoever."
"If only it were funnier. There's plenty of laughs in the episode, but Baron Cohen has a habit of pursuing particular rabbit holes for far too long. Not weak, however, is Baron Cohen the performer, who's clearly put some real time into these characters. His various accents, American and otherwise, are shockingly confident, and the precise, nimble mannerisms of characters like Cain-N'Degeocello and Sherman give the characters a strange kind of vulnerability. As such, it's easy to look past the overwrought prosthetics, which are an unfortunate byproduct of the comedian's fame."
"Shame is the missing ingredient in Cohen's Who Is America? and, unfortunately, it's not an ingredient that proves merely incidental. It's the difference between shocking and not shocking, between hilarious and simply fleetingly funny.
"The disappointing reality of Who Is America? is that Cohen hasn't really gotten anybody to espouse any ideology that they wouldn't and haven't advocated proudly without the subterfuge. We live in a world in which barriers between public brand and private ideology have essentially been erased. This show reveals Cohen, working under gallons of latex that must somehow play more realistically in person than onscreen, as a comic magician taking the stage after the prior prestidigitator revealed how all the tricks were done."
"So what, exactly, is Cohen trying to accomplish? It's not like comedians and late-night hosts have slowed down Trump and his followers. With Who Is America?, Cohen is giving these conservatives the encouragement and the platform to be themselves-to reveal their true natures and extreme views. It likely won't change anything. But, at the very least, his viewers can take some small, sick pleasure out of watching this country's ruling class make assholes of themselves on TV."
"If anything Cohen's new series answers its central question by demonstrating not only the extreme ideological divide between political spheres, but also that what previously might have worked as a way of shaming people, by coaxing them into revealing a side of themselves they might once have concealed is no longer a viable technique. As the saying goes: You can't shame a shameless person, and, from the look of it, that may be at the heart of what this series has sometimes humorously, but mostly dispiritingly uncovered."
Who is America? begins on Sunday, July 15 at midnight in the US on Showtime, and airs in the UK on Channel 4 at 10pm on Monday (July 16).
Want up-to-the-minute entertainment news and features? Just hit 'Like' on our Digital Spy Facebook page and 'Follow' on our @digitalspy Instagram and Twitter account.
You Might Also Like
