Movie Review: The Dictator Delivers Some Laughs, But Lacks The ...

Location

Wide Release

Dates

Opens May 16

With each successive Sacha Baron Cohen project, it feels as if the comedian?s best work may be behind him. If you had to pinpoint a moment that represented the best of what Cohen?s brand of humor can produce, look up the interviews he conducted as Ali G with Newt Gingrich or a number of NBA stars. Da Ali G Show offered a kind of high-minded candid camera masquerading as dimwitted contemporary broadcasting. Often brutal and unsympathetic to the interviewees, there was a daring to his faux-journalistic sabotage that satirized its subjects while roping in Ali G?s own farcical caricature into the humor. Da Ali G Show was fresh and often hilarious because the author?s bold and recklessly brazen approach left no one safe ? including the viewer.

Since then, while appearing in films from Madagascar to Hugo (the increasingly in-demand talent is even in the upcoming film version of Les Miserables), Cohen?s solo movies continue his assault of daring gags that push buttons and blow-out boundaries, but some of the bits feel increasingly contrived. To a certain extent, Cohen?s guerilla comedy style has been beaten back by a counter insurgency of fame and notoriety. He can?t catch us off-guard as easily anymore, and while his popularity leads to movie deals, Cohen feels funniest in sketch form?in short, blunt situational bursts.

What is most disappointing, then, about Cohen?s latest film, The Dictator, is that it is a straight-forward fictional project. There?s no staged documentary footage that catches unwitting subjects with their proverbial pants down. That is surprising considering how much Cohen-style antics have been roped into the marketing of the film, including fake press conferences with Cohen in character and Cohen?s dictator showing up on the red carpet at the 2012 Oscars to spill the fake ashes of Kim Jong-il on Ryan Seacreast.

In The Dictator, Cohen plays General Aladeen, a maniacal, if dimwitted dictator from the fictional Arabian country of Wadiya. He brutally suppresses his people and is trying to develop nuclear weapons to use against Israel (naturally). When a hair-thin plot point forces him to appear against his will at the United Nations, Aladeen travels toNew York and is then kidnapped by a henchman (John C. Reily) acting on behalf of Aladeen?s friend and turncoat rival to the throne, Tamir (Ben Kingsley). Aladeen avoids death, but ends up homeless inNew York, where he meets the cute manager of a green grocer, Zoey (Anna Faris).

There are three kinds of jokes in The Dictator. The first are cultural jabs ? at Arabs, green living, dictatorship societies, and lampooning of Middle Eastern current affairs. Then there are the stunt-based gags that involve the usual sex and feces jokes. Finally, Cohen uses Zoey as way of hurling heaps of offensive gender jokes that are justified by the overarching conceit that as a Middle Eastern dictator, Aladeen is hyperbolically derogatory towards women. In all three cases there is an implication of the laughing viewer that heightens the film?s comedic tension. Yes, when Aladeen berates Zoey or poops in the street or plays his stupid body double, a goat herder who milks the breasts of the prostitutes Tamir hires for him, we laugh. And how hard or unconsciously we laugh says something about our inner childishness or insensitivity (full disclosure: I laughed more than a little).

The best laughs in The Dictator come from Cohen?s nonchalant instinct for poking at cultural insecurities about cultural insecurities. One memorable scene takes place in a helicopter, when Cohen and co-star Jason Mantzoukas jabber in fake Arabic about Osama Bin Laden and 9-11 while two mid-American-looking tourists become increasingly anxious about their Middle Eastern co-passengers. It?s is funny, and it looks like a characteristic Cohen stunt, but it is also scripted one, which robs the situation of some of the satiric bite of Cohen?s previous real life interventions.

Between the gags, the film is bound to the conventions of its narrative situation. A meeting must be foiled by a couple of hapless almost-heroes. Cohen?s Aladeen has to grow to recognize his own inner sensitivity. He needs to learn to respect Zoey. He discovers that his skill with draconian authoritative action can actually be put to good use, helping the green food store get their act together. It?s sweet and a little out of character, and the effect is to muzzle Cohen?s bark.

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