Review: 'The Dictator'

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Sacha Baron Cohen’s “The Dictator” is literally a take-no-prisoners comedy. Get on the bad side of Cohen’s latest character, Admiral General Haffaz Aladeen, and out of your view he’ll make a throat-slitting gesture indicating he wants you offed.

That running gag is one of the mildest in Cohen’s willfully outrageous attempt to top his previous features with director Larry Charles: “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” and “Bruno.” Though “The Dictator” abandons the mock-documentary style of those films, the filmmakers strike pretty much the same comedic notes, to generally diminished returns.

Certainly in 2012, a brutal dictator qualifies as an easy target for comedy (that wasn’t true in 1940, when Charlie Chaplin released “The Great Dictator,” to which “The Dictator” implicitly nods). The racist Aladeen allows Cohen to make another round of blistering satirical gags about still-thriving anti-Semitism and sexism, buttons Cohen pushed repeatedly with Borat. This time, Cohen also baits African-American outrage with an over-the-top sequence involving a black corpse and an absurd appropriation of “I Have a Dream” (“Oppressed at last…”).

The premise sounds more promising than what Cohen and Charles deliver. Aladeen finds himself ousted by his uncle Tamir (Ben Kingsley), the long-suffering rightful heir to the dictatorship of fictional North African nation Wadiya. The “Prince and the Pauper”-style switcheroo of double Efawadh (also Cohen) leaves the real Aladeen lost in New York, and dependent on the kindness of stranger Zoey (Anna Faris), a vegan anti-corporate feminist. While Tamir leverages a U.N. appearance and a move to democracy to get rich off oil money, Aladeen plots to reclaim his role.

Cohen’s act wears thin with his “r”-rolling, blithely selfish Aladeen, and given the shrill scatology, “The Dictator” comes dangerously close to a bad Adam Sandler comedy. (Perhaps “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan.”) Still, “The Dictator” has several memorable moments, including a 9/11 run satirizing lingering “War on Terror” fears, and an absurd skit on a zip-line (capped with what’s by now an old-hat nudity “shocker”).

The film comes packed with cameos from the comedy elite, but Best In Show may go to Jason Mantzoukas for his fairly subtle straight-man work as nuclear scientist/terrorist Nadal. Make no mistake, though: Writers Cohen & Alec Berg & David Mandel & Jeff Schaffer keep the focus squarely on their star and, in the process, ask us to root for a racist, sexist rapist to achieve his goals, including winning the heart of the totally inappropriate, Free Earth Collective-running Zoey (what Aladeen really wants is a cuddle).

The undeniable charge to Cohen’s subversion, old news though it may be, unexpectedly proves strongest when the star bites the hand that feeds him, by suggesting that Hollywood celebrities are literal prostitutes (for decades, rumors have suggested that a handful at any given time have been).

“The Dictator” saves up its real nuclear-level threat for a climactic monologue, in which Aladeen indirectly demonstrates America’s lack of personal freedom. On its own, this daring breach of the multiplex is almost enough to excuse the misfired gags that come before.

Rated R for strong crude and sexual content, brief male nudity, language and some violent images. 1 hour, 23 minutes.

By Peter Canavese

Rated R for strong crude and sexual content, brief male nudity, language and some violent images. 1 hour, 23 minutes.

By Peter Canavese

Rated R for strong crude and sexual content, brief male nudity, language and some violent images. 1 hour, 23 minutes.

By Peter Canavese