The Dictator

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Year:	2012
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	Larry Charles
Genre:	Puerile nonsense
Starring:	Sacha Baron Cohen, Anna Faris
Rating:	2/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0267506/
Tagline:	No tagline
Favourite line:	"Those are breasts? I thought you were a boy."

Sacha Baron Cohen’s fourth full length outing.

The plot:
Admiral General Hafez Aladeen rules his native Wadiya with a tyrant’s fist. Executing those who disagree with him, his is a control that is total and absolute. Total and absolute until, one day, his Chief Advisor hatches a plan to force through political reform.
Sent to America, Aladeen thinks he is there to deliver a speech to the UN but, when he is kidnapped and his appearance is altered by the removal of his beard, he is forced to adapt to his new surroundings, the whole time working to regain the power he once held so dear.

Unlike his previous two offerings, Borat and Brüno, here Baron Cohen dispenses with the ‘reality’ angle, instead relying solely on a script. Last time he did that, the result was Ali G Indahouse, which was an absolute disaster and, thankfully, this is nowhere near as awful.
That doesn’t mean it’s particularly good, though.
Where Borat felt fresh and genuinely daring – see the scene at the rodeo, where Borat starts singing alternate words to The Star Spangled banner – this feels a little like a second year politics student flexing his comedic muscles and trying to be provocative just for the sake of it.
It also feels a bit been there, done that.
Borat was about a Kazakhstani heading to America as a fish out of water.
Brüno was about an Austrian heading to America as a fish out of water and, yep, this one is also about a foreigner heading to America, very much the fish out of water.
A path well trodden, then.
It has it’s moments, mind.
A helicopter scene where two suspiciously Arabic looking men discuss a Porsche 911 in their native tongue, to the horror of the American tourists also on the flight is truly inspired, and other moments shine, too:
A gaggle of Israeli politicians having piss thrown on them by an Islamic tyrant; a virgin wank; tonguing a hairy armpit, each bring genuine belly-laughs. But they are few and far between and, more often than not, the attempts at humour misfire, slightly, or just seem puerile.
Oh, and he gets his cock out again. No surprise there, really. Honestly, if yours was as impressive as his, you’d show it off, too.
A virtually empty screening makes us wonder whether the public at large is also tiring slightly of the same old gag being pulled one more time and, even those that did attend, did not seem particularly amused.
Bit of a damp squib, with the odd moment of magic.