Review of The Dictator (2012) by Joe H — 26 Nov 2012

Comedy telling us the story of Aladeen, the dictator of a small fictitious Arab state of Wadiya. This is the last character played by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, creator of Ali G and Borat. Aladeen is megalomaniac leader, a concoction of Gaddaffi, Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein that rules Wadiya with an iron fist, stealing the wealth of the country while de population lives poor and oppressed. During a visit to New York for a conference of ONU he is kidnapped and switched for a double by command of his "evil" uncle Tamir. Taken for dead, unrecognizable Aladeen must survive in multicultural New York until he has the opportunity to replace his double and retake the leadership of his country, but he must do it without his money, his security guards and his beard. He will have only the help of freedom activist Zoey and his exiled nuclear engineer Nadal.

Mr. Cohen attempts here to make a full fictional comedy, (the other ones required "victims"). It is a funny modern take of "The man in the iron mask" and really spot on in the political side of the film, the recreation of a banana republic and an oversized personality. However the love story and adventure bit is simply too ridiculous and far too unbelievable to make any sense at all. It feels like they couldn't make their minds up, half the movie is slapstick "non-sense" comedy, the other half is a sensible story of a man trying to restore order in his life. Both sides don't balance well and it leaves you confused and trying to figure out if you should really care for what happens to him or not. Good smart jokes are mixed with really below the belt toilet humour and that really puts me off.