Film Review: The Dictator

After the successes of Ali G, Borat and Bruno made Sacha Baron Cohen incredibly well known, it was virtually impossible to have another one of his creations blend with real life people in real life situations. Too many people would recognise him if he did it again. So instead we get the 'fictional' film The Dictator, which still manages to have Baron Cohen portray another larger than life personality, but with a bit less success this time round...

Aladeen arrives in NYC

Baron Cohen plays Admiral General Alladeen, the eccentric dictator of a fictional country called Wadiya who rules his country with an iron fist. Summoned by the UN who have worries about Wadiya's nuclear program, he is abducted, has his beard shaved off and is replaced by a double. He must now battle to ensure democracy doesn't come to his beloved country.

The Dictator is the very definition of a hit and miss film. When the gags hit it's great fun, but just as often they fall flat, and it comes across as insulting or just plain unfunny. And when I say insulting and unfunny, it's not like I don't get what the filmmakers are trying to do, or me not getting the joke, it just doesn't work a lot of the time.

The films highlight is undoubtedly a speech by Aladeen at the climax trying to sell the 'positives' of a dictatorship to America, whilst at the same time unwittingly listing all the negative things that has happened in that country in the last few years. If the rest of the film was like this, it would be getting a much higher score.

That's not to say that is the sole funny moment. A scene where Aladeen and his lackey Nadal (Jason Mantzoukas) take a helicopter tour of New York with an American couple is highly amusing, as is a good portion of the gags and one-liners.

But that leaves the rest. I can find humour in jokes about bodily functions every now and then, but that's really what a lot of The Dictator comes down to. And the jokes are poorly executed too. Or just unpleasant, such as "hilarious" jokes about the London Underground terror attacks or a disgusting birthing scene which is devoid of any humour.

And furthermore, there are only so many times that you can get away with a joke about race or religion just because the character saying it is an idiot. I could let the first couple slide, but by the end they seemed pretty unpleasant.

Yeah, people may say that it's topical, and there are dictators still in power that would do ridiculous sounding horrible things, but there are much better ways of making light of this, instead of just aiming your material at the crowd that think The Inbetweeners is the height of comedy.

And jokes like the Chinese Ambassador to the UN getting oral sex from celebrities is just pointless, even with an Edward Norton cameo thrown in, and the audience I watched it with reacted with stony silence to all of that stuff.

As usual, Baron Cohen throws everything he has at the role, and goes above and beyond (of course the press tour for the film has largely consisted of him giving interviews in character as Aladeen), and there's decent enough support from Anna Faris and Ben Kingsley, but you can't help but think that if the gross-out "humour" was pared down and the flashes of brilliance were given more time, we'd have a fantastic comedy on our hands.

**
The jokes hit about half of the time, and when they are good, they are very good. But when they miss, they are immature and disgusting. And not in a particularly funny or well executed way, either. The speech at the end of the film is a highlight though, and a glimpse at what a better film this could have been