Film review: The Dictator (15)

ITS jokes are somewhat hit and miss, but when it comes to sheer chutzpah, Sacha Baron Cohen’s new comedy still leads the way.

The Dictator

Directed by: Larry Charles

Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen, Ben Kingsley, Anna Faris

***

Much of Sacha Baron Cohen’s comic success has depended on his method-like ability to interact with the public as a succession of outré characters without letting the veil drop, no matter how extreme a reaction he provokes. Because of this, it’s never been entirely clear whether his comic creations are funny because of their air-tight conception or because of the context in which he places them.

The Ali G of Ali G in Da House, for instance, had none of the cutting edge inscrutability that made the character so compulsively funny to watch while he was interviewing real MPs on TV. Then again, after the gut-busting hilarity of Borat (still his finest achievement), the big screen version of Brüno demonstrated the limitations of using the hoax documentary format after the world had become wise to the gag.

His new film doesn’t really come any closer to answering this conundrum. That its character – a ruthless North African despot who goes by the name of Admiral General Aladeen – turns out to be a big, bold and outrageous creation is not entirely unexpected; nor is it unwelcome. Indeed, outside of Team America creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, it’s doubtful anyone else would have the guts to build a broad, mainstream film around a fascist with a penchant for genocide and sodomy.

Yet it’s precisely the broader aspects of the character, and the calculated outrageousness of some of the situations in which he’s placed, that ultimately prove to be the least funny aspects of the film. The big jokes – whisper it – aren’t really funny enough, with set-pieces mostly built around sometimes crude, sometimes surreal gross-out gags involving ill-timed bowel movements, masturbation, errant body hair and misplaced phone devices.

Plot-wise, the film is fairly conventional too, if at least topical. In his determination to resist any and all Arab Spring-inspired calls to introduce democracy to the fictitious, oil-rich nation of Wadiya (which he has ruled with fear since childhood), Aladeen becomes the victim of a secret coup while on visit to speak at the UN.

Cast adrift in New York while an imbecilic body double (also played by Baron Cohen) does the bidding of Aladeen’s formerly trusted uncle (Ben Kingsley), the character endures a series of incidences that fit within the fairly rigid confines of a fish-out-of-water comedy. Consequently, the film is lacking that anything-can-happen tension that was such a big source of laughs in Borat.

The film’s edge is further blunted by the need to fulfil at least some rom-com conventions. After a feminist health food hippie called Zoey (Anna Faris) takes Aladeen off the street and gives him a job in her co-operative food market, Aladeen finds himself inadvertently falling for Zoey’s wide-eyed charms, something that requires Baron Cohen to project sincerity, not exactly his strong suit.

And yet The Dictator is also a lesson in why Baron Cohen should never be dismissed completely. Its big laughs may miss more than they hit, but there are lots of sly, throwaway gags that make it worth persevering with the film.

When a brilliantly constructed moment of cultural misunderstanding (involving a tourist helicopter ride around New York and a conversation about a Porsche 911) lands Aladeen in prison, he throws out some priceless lines about institutional barbarity that are as subversive as anything in Borat. Similarly, when he applies his ruthless tendencies to help turn Zoey’s failing business around, the film playfully skewers the notion that well-meaning commercial endeavours can be run on goodwill alone.

There’s also one cast-iron moment of outrage – involving a breathtakingly offensive videogame – that raises guffaws purely for the chutzpah it took to include it. The influence of The Dictator’s director, Larry Charles, is much in evidence in these moments. Having directed Baron Cohen’s previous two films, the former Seinfeld writer knows how to wring a sly laugh out of a marginal moment of social awkwardness. And yet it’s in the film’s final pièce de résistance that both he and Baron Cohen score their biggest and smartest laughs as Aladeen’s address to the UN becomes a whip-smart satirical sideswipe at the hypocrisies of the West.

The Dictator may not be the great comic masterwork it perhaps should have been, but it’s a reminder that when Baron Cohen does land comedic blows, few people can touch him.