fc46b16aefa1c50b7bd4458120d144f7.jpg

‘The Dictator’

A loose-jointed, mildly funny fish-out-of-water comedy

By Elise Nakhnikian
AT his best, Sacha Baron Cohen knocks us off balance with blitzkriegs containing nearly every possible kind of joke, from gross-out physical humor to searing political satire. His joyful, often slapstick absurdism and random potshots at pop culture are to comedy what chum is to fishing, luring us close enough to feel the force of his anarchic rejection of both individual and institutionalized cruelty, violence, and prejudice of all kinds. He interacts with real people in his Borat, Bruno, and Ali G incarnations with a tenacity so relentless some read it as cruel, exploiting the kindness of strangers as he gets people to drop their guard, shed the social niceties, and reveal some of the ugly truths we try to bury under pious platitudes.
   Admiral General Aladeen (Baron Cohen), the leader of the fictional “rogue North African nation” of Wadiya and the title character of The Dictator, at first seems to be a classic Baron Cohen character. His cluelessness exceeded only by his self-confidence, he sports a ridiculous beard, a stiff, pelvis-first strut, and a generic Middle Eastern accent that makes him sound oddly like Adam Sandler doing schtick. But this time around, everything is scripted (by Baron Cohen and Alec Berg, David Mandel, and Jeff Schaffer, who worked with Dictator director and frequent Baron Cohen collaborator Larry Charles on Curb Your Enthusiasm). The screenplay is clever enough, but it’s also airless and unfocused.
   The semi-documentary format of Baron Cohen’s Ali G TV show and Borat movie allowed him to make thrilling kamikaze raids on the people he interacted with, blowing up deserving targets like mindless nationalism and bloodlust. In contrast, the sporadically funny Dictator is disappointingly tame and conventional, much closer to the meandering, cheap-shot-ridden Bruno than to the audaciously brilliant
Borat
movie. Never set loose to interact with real people, Aladeen doesn’t even interact much with the film’s fictional Americans, aside from his attenuated romance with the sweetly trusting Zoey (Anna Faris), who sees only the good in him.
   And so, except in one very funny sequence set in a tourist helicopter over Manhattan, we don’t get much of a chance to see what this cartoonish despot might reveal about our own demons. Baron Cohen and his team seem more interested in surfacing the ways in which American politicians profess to act on noble principle while behaving like the dictators they rail against, most notably in a nicely written speech Aladeen delivers to the UN and a deft passing swipe at Dick Cheney.
   But the hits on American hypocrisy are just fly-bys in what is mostly a loose-jointed, mildly funny fish-out-of-water comedy crossed with a spoof of the kinds of virulently anti-American autocrats who are secretly in bed with Americans. (They’re quite literally in bed with Hollywood here, thanks to running jokes about American celebrities who prostitute themselves to Aladeen and to a chortling Chinese ambassador.)
   It’s empowering to see bloodthirsty leaders like Kim Jong-Il, Muammar Gaddafi and, yes, Dick Cheney — who derive their power by feeding our fears — so casually mocked and belittled. Some of the film’s best insults are delivered in passing, as if the targets don’t even merit a full-on assault, like when Aladeen says Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “looks like a snitch on ‘Miami Vice.’”
   Aladeen is absurd and out of touch. Worse yet, he’s a nice guy. He doesn’t know that embarrassing fact himself at first (an early origin-of-the-specious montage establishes that he was groomed from boyhood to be a tyrant), but he learns it through his reluctant romance with Zoey. Baron Cohen’s awkward misfits always throw off the most sparks when they find the right partner, and Faris, wonderful as always as a wide-eyed comic innocent, humanizes Aladeen while providing a target for some of his best barbs. Aladeen loosens up even more around his buddy Nadal (Jason Mantzoukas), a scientist who fled Wadiya after Aladeen sentenced him to death. Hooking up at an ex-pat café in Jackson Heights, the two riff and tiff like Baron Cohen’s Borat and Ken Davitian’s Azamat in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, whose title alone is funnier than almost anything in The Dictator.
   Baron Cohen may not be trying to make dramas, but he’s in about the same phase of his career as Woody Allen’s frustrated filmmaker in Stardust Memories. His latest movie is enjoyable enough, but it just can’t please those of us who love his “early, funny movies.”
Rated R for strong crude and sexual content, brief male nudity, language and some violent images. 83 minutes.