The Dictator (2012)

Director: Larry Charles

Sacha Baron Cohen's film Borat is one of the best comedies of the last 10 years. It not only was hilarious but it revealed the stereotypes that people in America hold against foreigners and the subconscious racism that still permeates parts of our society. Because of the edgy but politically and sociologically revealing jokes of Borat the audience should have some expectation of what Cohen is going for in The Dictator. Unfortunately those expectations for me, were not met. My biggest problem with The Dictator is that it is wildly inconsistent. There are some scenes that are absolutely hilarious, some scenes that highlight stereotypes about Muslims/Arabs brilliantly, some jokes that take on some easy pop culture target and fall completely flat, and some jokes that are just too unrealistic to have any effect.

The movie is really more of a sketch comedy where the sketches have been half-heartedly put together with some barebones story. There are many scenes that don't even seem to be a part of the overall story and are just sketches that Cohen wanted to do with this character. It seems like Cohen found this character to be a great opportunity to make have some fun with tyrannical and horrible dictators. But it's not rooted enough in reality to actually make that much of an impact. I look at Four Lions as an example of what Cohen probably wanted to do but failed at. That film takes people universally accepted as not good and makes them out to be complete idiots, kind of what Cohen is going for here, but that film is funny because it is so close to what a terrorist plan might actually be so when it all goes awry it's hilarious and a great subtle statement on the stupidity of would-be suicide bombers. The Dictator though has a story in which a leader of a nation loses his identity and has to work in some alternative hippy co-op, it's all comes across as fantasy. I will say that Cohen does manage to include some good political commentary at times, including the great speech at the end, but the potential hinted at by those flashes of brilliance are what make this film ultimately disappointing.

Grade: C