Taking a filthy rich chauvinistic North African dictator, stripping away his identity in a pair of botched assassination attempts, and finding him roaming the streets of New York City as a “normal guy” might sound like the ingredients for an intriguing action thriller, but it’s actually the plot of The Dictator, a new comedy starring Sacha Baron Cohen that features scenes of sheer comic genius along with a plethora of crude racial and gender jokes guaranteed to make you cringe.
Cohen plays General Admiral Aladeen of the North African Nation of Wadiya, which seems to be a fictional blend of Qaddafi-era Libya, the late Kim Jong Il’s North Korea, and Ahmadinejad’s Iran. As a lifelong dictator, Aladeen is accustomed to getting what he wants –palaces, women, and sports cars, mainly. But after narrowly avoiding an assassination attempt by one of his own people, Aladeen’s premier Tahir (Ben Kingsley) convinces him to address the United Nations in New York, where the second assassination attempt also fails but results in Aladeen losing his trademark beard and wandering the streets of Manhattan as an unrecognizable man.
It doesn’t take long for Aladeen to figure out that Tahir was behind both assassination attempts in an effort to overthrow him and rule Wadiya through an ignorant Aladeen body double (Baron Cohen in a funny double role). As Aladeen works to expose Tahir and prove his identity as the real Aladeen, he ends up falling for Zoey (Anna Faris), a left-wing hipster activist who runs a health food store in Brooklyn. Yes, it’s a radical twist that never achieves an ounce of believability, but it allows Baron Cohen to tee off on feminists, vegans, tomboys, and ultra left-wingers terrified at the thought of ever straying from their political correctness. No spoilers here, but let’s just say that Baron Cohen’s satire in these areas is often downright funny, but he sometimes goes too far (nothing new there, I know) and you find yourself thinking, “Okay, I probably shouldn’t laugh at that.”
Ben Kingsley and Sacha Baron Cohen in “The Dictator.” © 2012 – Paramount Pictures.
Crude jokes aside, Sasha Baron Cohen is arguably one of the funniest writers and actors working today, and his comic intelligence shines often in The Dictator. There’s a scene on a helicopter that parodies mainstream America’s paranoia of Islamic Arabic terrorists to brilliant effect and might be the strongest few minutes of the film. In addition, Aladeen’s satirical speech about dictatorships near the end of the movie will make many think twice about the true nature of American democracy.
What it comes down to is this, if you’re a fan of Sacha Baron Cohen, you’ll probably like The Dictator. He pushes the comic envelope just as far as he did in Borat, Bruno, and Da Ali G Show. The big difference here is that he’s working with a script and a plot, but both are loose enough to allow Sasha Baron Cohen to be the Sasha Baron Cohen his fans have come to love and expect. On the other hand, if you’re easily offended and dislike political, racial, and gender satire, you should probably skip this one.
