Review: THE DICTATOR Provides a Few Laughs, Even If They're Mostly Tortured

There's no denying that Sacha Baron Cohen's a comedian with chutzpah. From his Ali-G era interviews with heads of state, to running through the streets of Jerusalem in the hit-and-miss Brüno, he's got a well honed schtick mixing broad comedy with witty repartie mixed in for good measure.

When it works, it's a wonderful thing to behold. Only Borat seemed to get everything right from start to finish, the mix of vignette moments with a well realized character (drawn like Brüno from the Ali-G show).

In The Dictator, Cohen takes on the already hyperbolic nature of the military strongman. From the first card commemorating the life of Kim-Jong Il, we're plunged into the desert lands of a fictional land of Wadiya. There we see the kinds of excesses that if they weren't based at least in part on the actual behaviour of such tyrannical leaders they'd be somehow less ridiculous. Gold plated cars ferry the man to-and-fro, he holds to impossible standards of decorum that seem inevitably to lead to summary execution, and even his body double's sacrifice merits little more than another other for death.

After flying to New York, His Excellency Admiral General Aladeen is sidestepped by his father's brother (played by Hugo co-star Sir Ben Kingsley) with another sheephearder/body double placed in his stead. A slightly convoluted narrative about a fascist-out-of-water traipsing through Brooklyn then unfolds, complete with ziplines, spiny fruit, and cunning shots of underarm hair licking.

There are a few moments where the comedy really cuts to the bone, but for the most part the laughs are seemingly lighter hearted, if not "safer" than the previous works. By sticking to a more conventional narrative, Director Larry Charles and Cohen have still left in some of the clunky pacing, start-and-stop nature of their previous collaborations. There's only a couple really memorable moments that characterize these films, those jokes or actions that are so over-the-top offensive that they transcend the cheap humour and become something much more sophisticated and challenging.

Humour often must rely upon shock and surprise, and many of the jokes, while funny in isolation, don't add up to an unabashedly humorous film. By starting and stopping throughout, the laughs lose their momentum, and we're left feeling that the whole thing's just...OK.

There is a moment towards the end when the satire becomes a little more biting, but it's all pretty tame compared to either the previous films, or even another film opening this weekend, Bobcat's God Bless America. It comes as too little, too late, and that's a shame.

For those new to the Cohen thing, or those that choose to see the film completely stoned (like the obnoxious prick who sat beside me at the screening, bragging about his bong hits before the show) the thing will be a hoot. I remain pleased that these guys are collaborating together, and think that Sacha's an enormous talent. I thought his fine performance as the Inspector in Hugo was under-appreciated, and I remain anxious to see what he brings to Django Unchained (Ooops, forgot he dropped out when Kurt Russel did!), and I think he'll nail the role of Thénardier in Les Miserables. I especially delight at the thought expressed by rumours of him starring in a Freddie Mercury biopic, a project that seems mired in the morass of script development hell.

Back to the here-and-now, The Dictator feels like a missed opportunity - it's short, with well under 90 minutes of actual content (the end credits proceeded extremely slowly to pad the running time), and yet it still felt like it overstayed its welcome. It's not the disaster that the trailers might lead you to believe, but nor is it the new masterpiece I was, perhaps irrationally, hoping for. Be assured you haven't seen every funny moment ruined by the promotional advertisements, but go in with relatively low expectations and you still might have a fun time traveling to the deserts of Wadiya to see The Dictator do his thing.