The Dictator
The Dictator can be summed up in one scene. He is hanging on a zipline and has to dump some weight so he can move forward. So, he pulls out a Vita Coco water and three bananas. The dialogue goes like this:
Jason Mantzoukas: Vita Coco water?
Sacha: It has as much potassium as three bananas.
He then pulls out three bananas and throws them on the street.
Jason: Then why the three bananas?
Sacha: I don’t trust the Vita Coco advertising.
The Dictator is a wildly uneven film that has a major hit or miss ratio. The good thing is that there is a joke every 10 seconds so there are many laughs. However, this is the first of Sacha’s films that feels lazy. Instead, of buiding upon a crazy character in normal situations that grow into absurdity the director puts Dictator Sacha in absurd situations such as birthing a baby, licking armpits or pleasuring himself with little build up. These scenes miss because they were not built upon anything. Remember the frank and beans scene in There’s Something About Mary? That scene BUILT to a huge laugh that influenced the rest of the movie. Hopefully, Cohen isn’t headed into Chevy Chase territory. In the 80s Chase stormed the comedy world with his understated brand of Chaseness. However, when he hit his pinnacle he started ditching the creativty for zany antics and wild situations.
Gone are the days of Borat stlyle guerilla filmmaking. He is too well known to manipulate the midwest like he did in his two prior films. Thus, The Dictator becomes a scripted comedy that is fully expected to push hot topic buttons. The problem is that Cohen and director Larry Charles have pigeonholed themselves into a corner. How do you top wrestling naked with an overweight man or almost inciting a riot at an MMA event? The answer is that you shouldn’t.
The best moments of this film come from unexpected throwaway lines. The funniest scene involves a kidnapped Cohen and John C. Reilly arguing about torture devices. For instance, he has a flame thrower that works via blue tooth and certain torture instruments have been banned because they are too safe. I thought it was hilarious that Reilly was showing off his tools to a dictator who has tortured thousands. My favorite part is when Reilly realizes he doesn’t have a splatter shield for his rectal umbrella torture instrument.
Another funny bit is when Aladdeen walks into a restaurant full of people he thought he had killed. He is told “everybody you thought you had executed lives here.” Fred Armison pops up on the screen and it cuts to a flashback where Aladeen and Fred are walking towards each other in a hallway and can’t decide whether to go left or right. They go into that little dance of who goes left or right and when it is over Aladeen tells his men to off Fred. It is a funny little moment that creates genuine laughs.
The best moments of this film don’t involve Sacha pushing buttons. They involve small character moments that do not carry the weight of surprising people. For instance, there is a scene where croc wearing Aladeen is threatening to jump off of a bridge and Jason Mantzoukas is trying to talk him down and convince him he isn’t hard on the outside and soft on the inside. He says “You are like an onion. Outer layer is an a**hole and underneath are ten layers of a**hole.” (I changed the language for the blog).
There are a plethora of funny moments in this film but it also has a lot going against it. The biggest dissapointment is Anna Farris’s vegan/organic store owner who is around for Sacha to say lines like this. “I love seeing women go to school. It is like a monkey on a roller skates. It means nothing to them but it so adorable to us.” He describes her as “little man, Harry Potter and Justin Beiber’s chubby double.” In Cohen’s world of grey humor and politics she is surprisingly black and white.
The biggest problem during some scenes is the obvious humor. For instance, there is a set up where Sacha and Mantzoukas are in a helicopter talking about a 911 Porsche and Bin Laden living in his guest house. Of course, he crashes the 911 and says he got another 2012 911. The white folk sitting across from them don’t take too kindly and they start screaming. The joke is too easy.
Sacha Baron Cohen and Larry Charles have spoiled the world with absurd characters and unshakable memories. Their work never felt forced or boring. The Dictator has it’s moments but it is time the two of them came up with a new comic creation. They’ve already pushed the envelope and now they are simply stuffing things into it. It is time they went back to their roots of creating creative comic characters and started from scratch.
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