Who Is America?

Like all of Baron Cohen’s work, Who Is America? has skirmishes with bro humor and punching down, but in sequences like the one mentioned above [Kinderguardians and as Nira Cain-N'Degeocello]--in which conservatives state the abhorrent things they truly believe because they think it’s safe--it justifies all of its inconsistency.

Ultimately, Who Is America? is a much-welcome return to form for Baron Cohen. ... Baron Cohen proves that he still has what it takes to get under the thin skins of the powerful people he clearly believes are making America worse. Watching them show their true colors to the world has never been more satisfying.

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.

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.

By shooting so high, the unflinching performer behind Da Ali G and Borat hits a few big marks, and misses some, as well.

It’s funny, sad, invasive and unhinged.

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, a 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.

But Who Is America? only presents its targets, both venal and sympathetic, with one real option: to be the butt of the show’s slippery humor.