The Dictator (2012)

I know I’m not alone in thinking Sacha Baron Cohen’s shtick has grown somewhat tiring over the years. His films aren’t even the problem; it’s more the way he goes about promoting them via a series of “controversial” red carpet stunts and talk show appearances. Any shock value it once had is gone, and the sneak attack approach seen in Borat and Bruno is no longer a viable option. If you’re Baron Cohen, people can now smell your tricks a mile away. As such, his new film The Dictator forced him to take his latest creation—Admiral General Aladeen, tyrant of the fictional Wadiya—into entirely scripted waters. This is a blessing in that it forces Baron Cohen, his screenwriters and director Larry Charles to create jokes, but they have serious trouble turning it into a coherent whole. There are plenty of funny moments in The Dictator, but they are hampered by an overall shapelessness and a few sequences that are downright painful.

Baron Cohen’s Aladeen is introduced in his home country, where he executes people willy-nilly and is looking to develop nuclear weapons. When the United Nations demands that he come to New York to answer for his crimes, he reluctantly agrees. Things only get stranger from there, and he winds up roaming the streets of New York City alone with no one believing who he is. He ultimately befriends a liberal co-op manager named Zoey (Anna Faris), and vows revenge against his disloyal uncle Tamir (Ben Kingsley). In his quest to return to the throne, he gets help from an ex-Wadiyan nuclear scientist named Nadal (Jason Mantzoukas).

This may be the plot, but that doesn’t keep The Dictator from running away from it as often as possible. There’s a general feeling throughout that Baron Cohen, Charles and the other writers put a handful of jokes up on the ol’ dry erase board and made sure to squeeze as many of them into the finished product as possible. Some of these jokes hit, but a lot of them miss because they feel like diversions rather than situations that come up organically. There is one scene that features Aladeen and Nadal riding in a helicopter along with two American tourists, and while the film gets a few chuckles out of it you realize immediately afterward that absolutely nothing was accomplished in those five minutes. Ditto a sequence later in the film in which Aladeen helps deliver a baby in the middle of the co-op. It comes out of nowhere, and it does nothing to move the film forward. Most modern comedies are chock full of digressions, but The Dictator never finds a way to justify them.

It’s a shame, because there a handful of genuinely inspired moments here, and the entire film feels like it could have been substantially improved with a couple more rewrites. The Dictator has plenty of political statements on its mind—many of which are recited by Aladeen in a monologue at the end—but this is a joke-driven comedy first and foremost. That wouldn’t be a problem if the jokes were funny, but right now they alternate between hilarious and too-easy, with a few genuinely painful gags thrown in. The film is at its best when it mines Aladeen’s ignorance, racism, sexism and violent tendencies for laughs, and is at its worst when it needlessly throws in gross-out humor for its own sake. Some moments feel like they were shoehorned in because Baron Cohen and Charles didn’t think the film was dirty enough, but here’s the thing: it doesn’t have to be. You don’t need to go to bodily fluid jokes when you’ve got a good thing going with the characters just saying ridiculous things to each other.

As problematic as The Dictator is, it’s promising to see that Baron Cohen is looking for new ways to keep his career going. People were already turned off by Bruno, and switching to an entirely-scripted format seems to be an acknowledgment that the old ways got old really fast. Sacha Baron Cohen is a talented, often very funny man, and The Dictator backs this up in all its best moments. (In fact, I could see former Baron Cohen haters being won over by a few scenes in this film.) It makes its agenda clear straight from the opening title, in which the film is humorously dedicated to a famous dictator we recently lost. Little touches like that are what keep the film afloat, but it never quite finds a way to stitch them all together.

When the film finally gets around to the plot, it resolves it in spectacularly unsatisfying fashion. The Dictator does itself no favors by forcing Aladeen into an actual arc, and it also makes the profoundly unwise decision of developing a romantic relationship between him and Zoey. Yes, you can argue it’s meant to be silly, but some things just don’t make any sense. (In particular, the way in which that relationship is resolved is completely unbelievable.) I realize this is the second time I’ve used this term in two reviews, but The Dictator might have been better served just to commit to being a “hang out movie.” Instead, it decides to be an uneasy mix of plot-driven comedy and digressive joke machine. Sacha Baron Cohen’s decision to move forward is admirable, but if scripted comedy is his future then he’s still got some kinks to work out.

Grade: C+