LOS ANGELES • Borat is back - and the fictional Kazakh journalist's new film spells bad news for Holocaust deniers, United States President Donald Trump's supporters and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, out yesterday on Amazon Prime, is the sequel to British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's 2006 smash hit mockumentary Borat, which grossed US$260 million, earned an Oscar nomination and spawned endless poorly punctuated catchphrases.
While the plot was under wraps, word of Baron Cohen's latest outrageous ambushes on unsuspecting participants has spread like wildfire, with Mr Giuliani issuing an angry denial on Wednesday after being tricked into a hotel room "interview" with an attractive and flirtatious young woman.
In the film, the encounter appears to leave the former New York mayor, 76, in a highly compromising situation, quite literally with his hands down his pants in the bedroom.
Mr Giuliani said on Wednesday that the scene was "a complete fabrication".
"I was tucking in my shirt after taking off the recording equipment. At no time before, during or after the interview was I ever inappropriate," he tweeted. "If Sacha Baron Cohen implies otherwise, he is a stone-cold liar."
Filmed in secret this summer as the US coronavirus lockdown eased, the follow-up movie again sees Baron Cohen hoodwink members of the US public and politicians via his bumbling and highly offensive reporter alter ego.
Mr Giuliani is far from the only Republican target left red-faced by the movie.
The film's loose premise sees Borat - disgraced by the first film's events - offered a chance to redeem himself and his country by presenting a gift to US VicePresident Mike Pence, who appears briefly in the movie.
Multiple subjects of the original film, including a pair of brash, drunken college students, sued the film-makers for conning them into appearing in the movie.
The follow-up film is already the subject of a lawsuit from the estate of a Holocaust survivor who died this year, shortly after she was filmed talking with Baron Cohen by a small fake documentary crew.
Ms Judith Dim Evans appears in the film to educate Borat on the Holocaust and is presented in a positive light.
"Upon learning after giving the interview that the movie was actually a comedy intended to mock the Holocaust and Jewish culture, Ms Evans was horrified and upset," reads the lawsuit filed by her daughter .
Baron Cohen, who is Jewish, is an outspoken campaigner against anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories, particularly against their spread on social-media platforms.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
