The Dictator

Synopsis: Admiral General Aladeen (Sacha Baron Cohen), “beloved oppressor” of Wadiya, visits the UN in New York to explain his position on nuclear arms where he is kidnapped by his jealous uncle (Ben Kingsley) and ends up working at a vegan feminist cooperative run by a hairy-armpit activist (Anna Faris).

As the saying goes, “two wrongs don’t make a right” and Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest doubly wrong film isn’t anywhere near right although I must confess I was smiling throughout, albeit in a slightly guilt-tinged way. Just as his other characters, Ali G, Borat and Brüno have been, Admiral General Aladeen is an incorrigibly egotistical low-brow but his absolute power gives Cohen the pretext to take his brand of in-your-face crassness to a new level This means not only the now genre-endemic gross-out gags involving bodily excreta but racism and, above all, a persistent misogyny, all of which trades on shock value much more than wit. Yet even if the sheer brazenness of the jokes does have a frisson of iconoclasm you can’t avoid the awareness that the reality behind them (the delights of rape, for example, are a recurring motif) is simply not funny. That is an ambivalence some will experience but let’s face it, the audience for this film, largely post-adolescent males, their mates and assorted obliging girlfriends, are noty likely to ge disturbed by such niceties.

If you have an entrenched sense of moral probity, or even one taking shape, don’t go near The Dictator as Cohen is as offensive as an MA rating will allow. The film will, I’m sure, do big business, not simply because its offensiveness has a certain cathartic value for the aforementioned demographic but because of Cohen’s pop cultural standing. (It, along with the pay cheque, presumably also won the involvement of Sir Ben Kingsley whom everyone I am sure has already noted looks uncannily like the current president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai. It is a resemblance which would have appealed greatly, if not been downright inspirational, to Cohen).

Although peer group pressure will predispose the multiplex masses to bray loudly and extol the film, in both form and content it is not very good at all. Ali G and Borat were brilliant comedic creations in part because Cohen completely disappeared in the characters whilst the real-life interview format he used with them was wince-inducingly effective as it permuted the comedy onto a new level of existential performance. Borat (2006), also directed by Larry Charles, worked as a feature length comedy because it got the balance of elements right. With Brüno (2009) the pair used the same formula but to a lesser effect. Moving further out along that limb, The Dictator is Cohen in a fake beard and the formulaically scripted and directed film takes him dangerously close to Adam Sandler territory. There is a moment towards the film’s end as Aladeen’s enumeration of the virtues of dictatorship mirrors the failings of American laissez faire capitalism that shows that Cohen is capable of a Ricky Gervais style of satire but it is a brief moment in what is otherwise a more-or-less merciless onslaught of flagrant bad taste. If that's what you call funny you won't be disappointed.

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