A desert of humour punctuated by a few oases of decent jokes.
I’m a fan of Sacha Baron Cohen, getting hooked during his early ‘Ali G’ days on Britain’s Channel 4. His humour is always crude, vulgar, childish and extremely silly. Yet at times it is also heavily satirical, aimed at those, like racists, who deserve such treatment. By remaining so convincingly in character, always pushing the limits of bad taste, Baron Cohen is often downright hilarious. 2004’s Ali G In Da House – The Movie was a let down as his trademark windups and improvised humour were replaced by a mundane script. Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan in 2006 capitalised on what made that character great by focussing on real life prank interviews with only a small scripted element. This was so popular that Baron Cohen’s third alter ego ‘Bruno’ got his own film in 2009, which for my money was even funnier than Borat… as it skewered some very worthy targets, I.E. homophobes and celebrity/fashion culture. Baron Cohen also took roles in other titles, including playing ‘Adolfo Pirelli’ alongside Johnny Depp in ‘Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barbour of Fleet Street’, released 2007.
But after using all three of his famous characters, and becoming too well known to be able to pull pranks, what solo projects could Baron Cohen tackle next? Sadly, the answer is 2012’s The Dictator, where he plays ‘Admiral General Aladeen’, the brutal, childish ruler of fictional Wadiya. Predictably, Aladeen has to travel to America to address the U.N. regarding his ‘peaceful’ nuclear programme. There, he is left wandering New York incognito after a botched assassination attempt that sees his idiot double ‘Efawadh’ (also Baron Cohen) take his place as ruler to do the bidding of Aladeen’s Uncle Tamir, who’s played by Ben Kingsley. Why an actor of Kingsley’s ability keeps ending up in demeaning roles like this is a mystery. His low point was surely playing ‘The Evil Hood’ in the dire live action Thunderbirds of 2004.
Anyways, Aladeen is befriended by American left wing activist Zoey (Ana Faris, best known from the Scary Movie franchise), who fails to recognise him as the dictator she’s been campaigning against in a rally outside the U.N. building. He also enlists the help of former Wadiyan nuclear scientist Nadal (Jason Mantzoukas) whose execution Aladeen had ordered on a whim some years before. It turns out that all Aladeen’s execution order victims were smuggled to the U.S. by the Wadiyan resistance. The rest of the plot concerns Aladeen and Nadal trying to prevent Efawadh declaring Wadiya a democracy in a speech to the U.N, so that Tamir can get rich selling oil to outsiders. Inevitably, along the way Zoey and Aladeen fall in love, he defeats the plot against him and after a change of heart brings (cosmetic) democracy to Wadiya. You’d be forgiven for thinking this is a recipe for success, after all playing outrageously unpolitically correct foreigners is Sacha Baron Cohen’s forte. Whilst there are some genuinely funny moments, like Aladeen’s ‘Munich Olympics’ Wii game in which the player guns down Jewish athletes; The Dictator is badly let down by a poor script, the same problem that crippled Ali G In Da House. In Borat… and a lesser degree in Bruno the script was just a frame to hang pranks from. So it didn’t matter how fluid it was. Whereas The Dictator is all scripted, thus requiring decent plot, characterisation and professional direction, none of which it gets. A lot of humour generated by the Borat and Bruno characters came from watching real people’s reactions to them. Naturally this humour is missing from The Dictator. Instead, visual slapstick and dialogue are used, to weak effect. For every joke that’s funny, such as Aladeen trying to throw away a newborn when he sees it’s a girl, there’s about five others, like the Chinese official paying male Hollywood stars to fellate him, that fall flat. The satire is spelled out to such a degree that all mirth is wrung out of it. More damage is done as the writers try to give Aladeen a sympathetic edge. All he really wants is true love, the one thing his power and wealth cannot get him. Sure, he can pay Michael Bay reject Megan Fox for sex, but he can’t make her cuddle afterwards. Sacha Baron Cohen’s other creations have no redeeming characteristics at all, that’s part of why they’re so amusing. Humanising Aladeen detracts from his entertainment value and sits awkwardly alongside gags about him molesting fourteen year old boys who subsequently commit suicide. Is this someone the audience is meant to root for? I was made to laugh out loud during The Dictator, just not nearly as often as I’d expected. Hopefully Sacha Baron Cohen will put more thought into any future projects of his, or stick to appearing in other people’s films.
Director: Larry Charles.
Producer: Sacha Baron Cohen
Leading Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Ana Faris, Ben Kingsley, Jason Mantzoukas
Running time: 83 minutes
Country: United States
Film Rating: 
