I'm about to do the nicest favor for you that you've had all week. You're welcome, in advance. I'll preface it with a story. There is an episode of The Twilight Zone called "To Serve Man". Creepy aliens come to Earth and give humankind a big book called, you guessed it, To Serve Man. This helps the humans by telling them how to cure their diseases as well as end worldwide famine. The aliens are such great "bros" to humanity that they decide to invite people to "bro out" on they home planet. People go without asking any questions.
Pretty soon, a scientist researching the alien book realizes the terrible, terrible truth……To Serve Man is an alien cook book with which to eat humans!!!! He then goes buck wild and tries to warn everyone at the spaceship loading docks by yelling "NOOOOO!!!!! ITTTTS AAAAA COOOOK BOOOOOOK!!!!!!!!" No one cares, he gets pushed onto the spaceship, and then thats about it.
Anyway, I'm here to warn you, good people of Earth…..if you value your life and sanity, DO NOT see The Dictator, the latest comedic travesty to plague a theater near you. ITS A COOOK BOOOK!
The Dictator follows Sacha Baron Cohen (of Borat, Bruno, and Madagascar fame) as Admiral General Aladeen, the leader of the African nation of Wadiya. He is a cruel, ruthless leader that is despised by his constituents. His right hand man (played by Ben Kingsley….no joke) betrays him on a trip to NYC, and Aladeen is left alone in the Big Apple, with no one able to recognize him. He then befriends an organic grocer (Anna Farris) and attempts to reclaim his title as the dictator of Wadiya.
I feel dirty giving this film the courtesy of a summary. I'm so sorry, dear reader, for the pain that your eyes just had to endure.
This is strikingly similar to the Adam Sandler disaster You Don't Mess With the Zohan, and it is just about the same level of funny as well (which is "not very"). Almost every joke falls flat, is awkwardly offensive, and at the hands of the unlikable character Aladeen, this is a perfect storm for comedic discontent. Borat found a way to offend the world with a loving, affable tone by being over the top in absurdity, but when The Dictator makes a foul joke about the Israeli killings at the 1972 Munich Olympics, it is just uncomfortable for all the patrons in the theater.
Cohen thrived in his television show and previous films by basing the majority of his comedy in improv. He would set his character in a funny situation, countered by either unknowing bystanders or actors improving, then create golden comedy out of off color jest through his dead pan sillyness. The Dictator is, and comes off as, fully scripted. This sucks the life and humor out of everything and everyone seen on screen. The film is nothing more than an empty husk.
There are three, and only three, jokes that work in the film. One involves Aladeen changing the words for both "positive" and "negative" to "Aladeen," which results in a hilarious scene in which a man goes to the doctor. The other comes from Aladeen's friend saying "Crocs are a sign of a man who has given up. Next you will be wearing sweatpants and spending your nights at Applebees!" This was probably only funny because that is a dead-on description of me (I have done all three of those things on more occasions than I'd like to admit)….The other joke is too weird for me to describe, but it involves Blake Griffin and Cohen…"polishing the bald man's head", so to speak, on screen.
There you go. That paragraph shows the only redeeming qualities of this movie, one that is destined to be in the dollar DVD bin at Kmart. On a scale of 0 to 4 stars, with half a star being Epic Movie and three-and-a-half stars being Borat, The Dictator gets a pitiful one star.
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