“Borat 2” makes an America slathered in misogyny and disinformation reckon with itself
On Wednesday multiple news outlets revealed the purported headliner of “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” to be none other than Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s trusted lawyer and cable news’s favorite nutcase. Compared with the mock attempted kidnapping Pamela Anderson, Borat’s ultimate get in 2006’s “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” the pranking of America’s mayor does not make for a grand climax or even an affectionate one. Instead, it more or less confirms what we already know about Rudy Giuliani: his corruptibility makes him shockingly easy to dupe. All it took for the producers of “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” to succeed in their mission was a simple honeytrap, presented in the form of Baron Cohen’s exceptional co-star Maria Bakalova dressed as a right-wing fake news Barbie. By the time we get to that scene the Bulgarian actor has solidly established that she is the reason this feminist-themed sequel works as well as it does. Performance-wise, Bakalova fully commits and never breaks, keeping pace with Baron Cohen in every shared sequence and commanding every scene she …
