The Dictator

Slapdash and mercifully brief is the highest praise I can give the Dictator, the latest from (mellowing) provocateur Sacha Baron Cohen.  I never got bored or particularly outraged, which, for a hot button farce like this, is a blessing in the case of the former, and unfortunate in respect to the latter.  A breezy run time is essential for comedy.  It should be swift, breathless and on point.  This is why the morose, over reaching bullshit Judd Apatow peddles has always rubbed me the wrong way.  No, The Dictator doesn't commit the cardinal sin of being dull, it just feels sort of toothless and expected.  The last thing you want from an abrasive, cutting edge comedy.

The reason that Borat and (to a vastly lesser extent) Bruno worked, is because Cohen slyly teased the caustic, uncomfortable observations from his ambush subjects.  In The Dictator, he simply sums it all up with a big fat obvious speech his character gives at the end.  I agree with the bulk of the sentiment, I just don't find the delivery of it clever or compelling in the least.  There's some interesting notions and confrontational questions at play in the story.  Is Western Democracy really just a corporate dictatorship dressed up by the illusion of capitalist choice?  Is there no difference between unrepentant fascists and self righteous, ideological do-gooders?  How do you implement true democracy in a nation that's never known it, and having done so, how do you measure its success?

Interesting questions all, and certainly ripe for a satirical skewering.  But why bother when you can keep getting sidetracked by scatological asides, gross-out sex gags and tired celebrity jabs? I'm not saying their isn't room for the irreverent and the tasteless, but here it's the main course when it should be a salty condiment, judiciously applied.  It doesn't help that the three main characters arbitrarily vacillate their stances and objectives seemingly at will throughout the film leading up to the rote, unsatisfying conclusion.

But hey, at least it got where it was going in 80 minutes as opposed to this weekends other celebration of brainless force, Battleship, which clocked in at an excruciating 133 minutes. The Dictator is admittedly fun from a design standpoint and sports a magnificently infectious soundtrack.  I like the performers involved well enough and hell, I'll say it again, it's short. It's not something I would ever watch again and wouldn't recommend beyond a 1$ Redbox rental in two and half months.

Where Cohen goes from here is what I find intriguing.  I appreciate his interest in exposing, dissecting and deflating political hypocrisy and social injustice through his art.  But he needs to find a more trenchant way to do so than merely playing clueless, lovable monsters who spew hateful comments for laughs.  That's been done plenty now, no better than by him.  He needs to find a more intelligent, complex way to address these subjects, more like his groundbreaking HBO series and less like the juvenile spiral in which we find his work currently mired.  I will say this, I think with Sweeney Todd and Hugo, he's definitely proven himself capable of more varied and dramatic work.  That's an avenue I'd much rather follow him down than the one The Dictator seems to be taking.