The Dictator
Consistently offensive, and not in a way that should automatically be excused as 'edgy' or 'provocative'.
Overview
When news first broke of Sacha Baron Cohen's new film about a Middle Eastern dictator, it was difficult not to feel like the greatest idea for a comedy had been staring us all in the face and only he'd been clever enough to see it. Despots and madmen like Hussein, Kim Jong-Il and Gaddafi, wait … Kaddafi? Qadhaf- … like bin Laden were already so ripe for parody that the script would almost have written itself, not to mention the added benefit of not having to worry too much about allegations of slander. Add to that the phenomenal events of the Arab Spring and the overthrowing of both the above leaders and their contemporaries and The Dictator seemed poised to be the perfect film for the perfect time.
Unfortunately, however, it instead feels like the kind of film a real dictator would have penned and put into production without anyone offering any sort of constructive criticism for fear of being executed. There are definitely some funny moments, and even a few brilliant ones, but on the whole it's a disappointingly infantile film lacking in so much of the subtlety that's underscored Baron Cohen's previous work.
"Subtlety?" you say. Well yes — beneath the trademark political incorrectness and gross-out humour of a movie like Borat lurked Baron Cohen's artful capacity for revealing the ludicrous nature of his interviewees' prejudices. Perhaps it was the ambush nature of his earlier films — something no longer possible due to the notoriety they earned him — but exposing a person as a bigot is quite a different beast to simply creating a character and having him say the same sorts of derogatory things.
In that sense, The Dictator is consistently offensive, and not in a way that should automatically be excused as 'edgy' or 'provocative'. If anything, it's just lazy. When it's not being so misogynist or homophobic, the jokes largely fall under the three broad areas of urination, defecation or masturbation, and one can only laugh so much at that kind of humour before it grows tiresome. Traditionally we call that period: 'puberty'.
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