“The Dictator” is one of those comedies where you like a despicable main character simply because he’s the main character. This works only in the movie world, and it’s a particularly effective phenomenon in Sacha Baron Cohen comedies, because, as usual, the daring actor pushes the envelope of how sheltered, horrible and morally bankrupt a main character can be.
Although “The Dictator” is a straightforward scripted film (whereas “Bruno” and “Borat” found Cohen playing a role while those sharing the screen didn’t knowing he was acting), it still has a fair amount of shock value, mostly involving bodily functions and behavioral culture clashes. Yet it’s also a valid commentary on current world politics.
I don’t know if anyone other than Cohen could’ve pulled off this tricky trifecta:
1. I like Wadiya’s Admiral General Aladeen (or, if you prefer his fake name, “Allison Burgers”) even though there’s nothing to like about him. He has his underlings killed for the tiniest slight. He cheats at his own version of the Olympic Games by shooting the other runners. He can’t speak of equal rights without laughing. His only redeeming value is that being a dictator is the only thing he knows, and when he starts to learn about other things, he changes.
2. The movie makes fun of everyone, and therefore it avoids a pointed political agenda even though it’s a political movie (Adam Sandler’s “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan,” about Israel-Palestine relations, is a similar achievement). “The Dictator” makes fun of Middle Eastern regimes and accents (Aladeen pronounces “Zoey” different every time), it makes fun of Aladeen’s lack of worldliness (to him, black people are “Sub-Saharans”), and it also very much makes fun of America and its hypocritical and dangerous foreign policy. John C. Reilly plays the U.S. security agent who tells Aladeen he hates all “A-rabs.” Despite being broad enough to avoid controversy, “The Dictator” also makes astute political points. Aladeen’s speech at the end, where he inadvertently describes the United States in 2012 while espousing everything that’s great about his dictatorship, will one day be a YouTube favorite, ranking up there with Ricky Gervais’ accidental religion-creating speech in “The Invention of Lying.”
3. “The Dictator,” in addition to its gross-out gags, also has some good old-fashioned humor. When Aladeen gets caught on a wire halfway between two buildings and his colleague tells him to drop some weight, we find that his robes are filled with all sorts of hilarious oddities. Granted, that’s quickly followed by a poop joke and a penis joke, but I often find the more innocent humor in raunchy films like this to be the funniest stuff.
Anna Faris is the other main character, Zoey, the independent-grocer love interest of Aladeen, and — as always — she lights up the screen, even though she’s decidedly dressed-down for this role, even sporting armpit hair. Faris — and pretty much everyone in the film — understands Cohen’s one-of-a-kind brand of humor; the success of his previous comedies probably led to this.
These elements combine to make “The Dictator” an absurdly juvenile romp that’s also underhandedly intelligent. It doesn’t quite have the “Oh my god, did he really do that?” element of “Bruno” or “Borat,” but nonetheless, it’s nearly as effective.