The Dictator is the latest comedy from the maker of Ali G, Borat & Brüno, this time heading towards a very political satire of todays dictatorships and political systems of 21th century, with its title as a nice throwback to the amazing Charlie Chaplin movie, the Dictator.
This is the story of Admiral General Aladeen (Sacha Baron Cohen), who runs the North African Republic of Wadiya, which by the way has a lot of oil. Aladeen hates the concept of democracy and values the concept of dictatorship, but due to his fascination and obsession with nuclear weaponry, the UN demands his presence in the New York Headquarters to prove that everything is okay, but thats where everything goes wrong: In an assassination attempt his beard gets destroyed, thus no one recognizes him!
Thus after a 15-20 minute introduction to the great republic of Wadiya, the audience is treated with its main plot consisting of Aladeen trying to return to the UN to deliver his speech, backstabs within his own personal stuff, learning more about America, seeing political escapees of Wadiya and whatnot, the story is really tongue-in-cheek so dont take it seriously, just go with the flow and enjoy the comedy it has. The supporting cast is composed of Tamir (Ben Kingsley), Nadal (Jason Mantzoukas) and Zoey (Anna Faris). There really isnt much to say about the plot, after all this is merely a 82 minute long movie, so who really wants to spoil or go deep into it?
The jokes are crude, vulgar, racist, homophobic and flatout outrageous, me and my friends had a blast during the entire time, added with a nice Arabic vibe with its soundtrack, you got a nice mixture of Eastern World meets Western, as some of the best jokes come with Aladeens dialogue with Zoey, who is just a mere 2nd rate citizen to him due to her womanhood.
So yeah, I dont wish to get any deeper, its not Borat or anything when looked into the Maximus Opus of Cohens film career, but its an entertaining movie and has a very beautiful speech about democracy, which was just poetry in itself.
