There’s a moment when we see The Dictator of Wadiya Admiral General Aladeen play a game on the Wii specifically for dictators. In it, he swings his arm as if playing Wii Tennis, but instead he’s cutting off a video game avatar’s head. It’s not exactly offensive because it’s so dopey.
“The Dictator” is much like that Wii game, cartoonishly violent and gross, but never truly edgy or interesting.
Aladeen is the latest character creation by Sacha Baron Cohen, whose Ali G, Borat and Bruno characters on “Da Ali G Show” and their respected movies all share the gift of being immensely stupid but strangely interesting, if not likeable.
Aladeen, despite being a mass-murdering dictator, feels much the same. He treats executions and persecution with gleeful joy. There’s nothing vindictive about him.
And in countless talk show appearances, press releases and his hilarious prank on Ryan Seacrest at the Oscars, Cohen has crafted an amusing aura surrounding Aladeen. He’s a plain interesting figure, and we’re constantly craving to know more about his ridiculous policies, his history and his third world kingdom. The opening 10 minutes treat us to flashes of his sexcapades, with such celebrity figures as Megan Fox, Katy Perry, Halle Berry and Oprah.
But unlike “Borat” and “Bruno,” “The Dictator” is a scripted comedy in which Aladeen travels to America, is kidnapped and thrown to the streets of Brooklyn while an impersonator and his controller try to usurp his throne. The comedy comes in doses, playing more like a series of SNL sketches stretched into a feature. Thus, the obligatory scenes involving Aladeen and his new love interest Zoey (Anna Faris) are plain dreadful.
Even these however do little to match the creativity in the early introductions in Wadiya. Cohen and Director Larry Charles keep coming up with lame puns, sex acts or empty threats to remind you that Aladeen is a dictator. Although the movie has some fun with some stereotypes in a helicopter scene where Aladeen and a companion talk about their Porsche 9-11s or the exploding fireworks over the Statue of Liberty, it devotes more time to Aladeen reading signs to invent fake names for himself. These get tired quickly, and Cohen takes some losing gambles with a shot that takes place inside a vagina, which is more disgusting than it is controversial.
I think Cohen forgets how interesting a dictator can be. You watch Castro, Qaddafi, Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il or Saddam on TV and get the idea that these guys are absolutely bat shit crazy! The stuff they believe and say in front of mass audiences make you somersault in your head. It’s the reason “30 Rock’s” recent lampoonings of Kim Jong Il have been plain surreal.
Is it possible I wanted “The Dictator” to be more offensive? Asking that of Cohen is like asking one of these real dictators to be more of a tyrant. I think I just wanted it to be less stupid.
2 ½ stars