The
Dictator: ***/*****, or 6/10
At least
there's one thing to be said for dictators: they make for bizarrely
colourful characters, and their regimes often feature such ludicrous
rules of conduct the rest of the world cannot do anything but wonder
just how seriously these tyrants should be taken. It seems like a
natural ingredient for a comedy, though given the subject matter most
people don't dare to make a feature film out of it. Charles Chaplin's
The Great Dictator, already 72 years old, still rules supreme
as the number one example as to how a brutal oppressive government
can successfully be made fun of, though after WW II Chaplin admitted
in hindsight he would not have made the movie had he known just how
atrocious Hitler's reign of terror had been, making the film taste
sour when watching certain scenes spoofing situations that in
reality would have cost hundreds of lives. It can be said The
Great Dictator was made too early, making it a light take on
history that had yet to occur. The opposite now happens with Sacha
Baron Cohen's latest raunchy comedy, simply called The Dictator,
which, when compared to recent history, feels it was released a
little too late to feel like it's truly up on current events.
The
dictator is question is Admiral-General Aladeen (of course performed
by Cohen), Supreme Leader of Wadiya (a fictional North-African
country), who was born in power thanks to his father who violently
seized control. Having ruled his nation since the age of seven,
Aladeen is a typical 'spoiled brat' type of overlord, who views his
country as his own private playground and has everybody who disagrees
with him executed without mercy. Aladeen does whatever he feels like
doing, including hosting and competing in the Wadiyan Olympics, which
he wins by shooting his fellow contestants, as well as sleeping with
celebrities who prostitute themselves for substantial fees (and the
movie makes it clear there's a lot of those, which makes for the
funniest roles both Megan Fox and Edward Norton have ever played).
Like any rogue nation, Wadiya has its own nuclear programme, which
according to a loudly snickering Aladeen will only be used for
peaceful purposes. Of course, the UN won't fall for his not so
convincing performance, so he's requested to address its
representatives in New York or face air strikes. And thus, Aladeen
heads to the USA, the birthplace of AIDS as he calls it, to ease the
international community.
Warning!
Here be spoilers! So far The Dictator doesn't seem much
unlike Cohen's previous projects, Borat and Brüno,
both of which also opened with a string of fairly random scenes
applied to establish the film's main character and the bizarre world
he inhabited, leading to a trip to the States that made the
protagonist come into conflict with American extremities and himself,
in yet more loose scenes that felt mostly like separate sketches
instead of a progressive narrative. The Dictator however has a
more consistent storyline. Soon after arrival at his New York hotel –
where they charge an outrageous 20 dollars for Internet! – Aladeen
finds himself victim of a conspiracy and carried off for torture and
vicious death, only to be replaced by his most recently installed
doppelganger, a very simple minded goat herder whose only job it is
to be shot in the head. The plot against his life is planned by his
uncle Tamir, who means to use the decoy Aladeen to move Wadiya
towards a democracy only to sell off its oil reserves to foreign
contractors and get excessively rich in the process, over the backs
of the Wadiyan populace. Tamir is played by Ben Kingsley, a seemingly
surprising bit of casting considering his unwavering status as one of
the world's greatest actors, someone who most people would never
expect to see in a raunchy comedy like this. However, for every
masterpiece like Schindler's List or Gandhi, Kingsley
has done a Thunderbirds or Love Guru, revealing he's up
for anything if the money is right, not unlike the Megan Foxes of the
celebrity world this film also pokes at with hilarious results.
Due to
his experience in torture, Aladeen escapes his imprisonment only to
be left on the streets of New York to fend for himself. When trying
to get into the UN building he meets Zoey, a bisexual feminist
activist (played by Anna Faris made unrecognizably boyish) who offers
him a job at her eco-collective, where every employee is a political
refugee, offering Cohen the full potential to make politically
incorrect fun at every conceivable ethnic, gender or demographic
minority. In the New York neighbourhood of Little Wadiya, Aladeen
also meets Nadal (Jason Mantzoukas), the former chief of his nuclear
program who he thought he had executed for disagreeing over the shape
of Wadiya's first nuclear missile (Aladeen wanted it pointy, since a
rounded shape would make it look like a giant flying dildo). In
exchange for returning to his old job, Nadal agrees to help Aladeen
get back to power. Though it seems rather gullible of a scientist
sentenced to death to trust the one who gave the order, Nadal and
Aladeen work together more effectively for story purposes than
Aladeen does with Zoey, who's cooperation seems mostly an excuse for
dirty gags, many of them funny, all of them sexist, racist or
generally offensive (as we're used to from Cohen). However, in the
latter case, the comedic result is much more convincing, while
Mantzoukas unfortunately proves himself to be inexperienced when it
comes to the gift of timing, making many of the funny situations he
participates in sadly miss their mark.
Hilarity
aside, the audience expects Cohen to make at least some political
comments when it comes to dictatorships in an age where one after the
other bites the dust. In this regard, The Dictator seems to
have been produced a little too late to feel in any way relevant.
Many of the much despised people Cohen, either implicitly or explicitly,
refers to in this movie, have fallen victim to the results of their
own tyranny by now, including Osama Bin Laden, Khadaffi, Charles
Taylor and Berlusconi, yet the movie presents them, either in
character or only in dialogue, as still active, or even still alive.
Though the movie opens with an 'in memoriam' to Kim Jong-Il, this feels like a simple last-minute addition, done mostly to make the film appear to be more up
with the times than it eventually turns out to be. The Dictator,
alas, is revealed to be an already outdated project by the time it
hit movie screens. Of course, there's still plenty of dictators left presently, but
none of these remaining tyrants are either well known enough,
disturbing enough or simply funny enough to be made (ab)use of in The
Dictator, not even in late post-production additions like
Jong-Il. It seems all the cool dictators have already passed away, or
at least been forced to step down, just before Cohen could
effectively spoof them in his hommage to oppressive regimes.
And an
hommage it is, even if only for comedy's sake. In the end, Aladeen
succeeds in foiling uncle Tamir's evil schemes, publicly tearing
Wadiya's new constitution to pieces in front of the UN delegation,
resulting in a speech applauding the many virtues of dictatorships
over democracies, of course referring to America's insidious and
slow, but poignantly present move towards the former in the recent
decade, in which we again spot Cohen just missing the appropriate
time frame in which to state his 'j'accuse', considering the
level of repression in the USA has at least diminished under Obama
compared to the Bush doctrine. While the anti-Jewish, anti-Islamic
and anti-gay slurs Cohen revealed as ever present in American in his
previous projects, seem ever prevalent (this movie resorts to
exposing them too, to a minor extent), his views on America's level
of democratic decline seems at the least outdated, undermining the
point he makes on America appropriating anti-democratic behavior
which it critiques in other nations (that is, if you feel Cohen ever
bothers to make such points, which is also debatable). Like the way
Cohen praises the wonderful grotesqueries of tyranny a little behind
schedule, so to arrive his allegations towards the “American
regime” too late to make them feel all that relevant to audiences.
Oh well, at least we still have the jokes.
And at
least in terms of comedy The Dictator delivers some positive
results. Of course, many remarks and situations result in extremely
crude, deviant sexual gags, as we've come to expect from Cohen, nor
would we have it any other way by now. Some of them are genuinely
funny despite their obviously adult content – why this movie only
got a '12' certificate in the Netherlands is beyond me – while
others are glaringly embarrassing to watch, including a woman giving
birth and Aladeen coming to her aid by accidentally jamming his fist
up her butt. Fortunately the cringe-worthy moments form a minority,
while several instances of great humour undoubtedly will prove
memorably hilarious, and quotable for years to come. The greatest
gags involve Wadiyan life under Aladeen's rule, like many words
having been replaced by the term 'aladeen', including 'positive' and
'negative', resulting in confusion when a doctor informs his patient
of 'aladeen news' since he's 'HIV-aladeen'. Plus, we'll never forget
the sight of a wall adorned with thousands of photos of Aladeen
posing with a celebrity he has had sex with (including Oprah Winfrey
and Arnold Schwarzenegger). Whatever point The Dictator has
missed thematically, it compensates for the most part in terms of
humour.
Overall,
The Dictator will certainly never reach the status of an
undying classic like The Great Dictator did, despite both
films missing the mark historically. Even if the former had reached
theatres, say, a year earlier, it would still contain various
painfully unfunny gags taking the momentum out of the overall picture
(which is already running short with only 83 minutes). However, like
Borat and Brüno before
it, the film also contains enough good jokes to make it a decent
enough watch, and it proves that with every vile dictator gone, the
world of comedy remains a little less colourful.
And
watch the trailer here:
