Directed by Larry Charles
(R)
***
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The Dictator seems intent on breaking down “every boundary of taste imaginable,” offering something to offend everyone, said Chris Vognar in The Dallas Morning News. But “if nothing here makes you laugh, you might need to loosen up.” Sacha Baron Cohen stars as a tyrant who’s double-crossed by an adviser (Ben Kingsley) during a visit to America, and ends up working in a food co-op and developing feelings for a feminist vegan played by Anna Faris. Baron Cohen uses a script here, and the result isn’t as funny as his unscripted 2006 mockumentary Borat, said Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune. “Weirdly artless” camerawork contributes to the movie’s “maddeningly uneven” effect. Baron Cohen has essentially updated the Eddie Murphy comedy Coming to America without even offering “much of a twist on the genre,” said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian (U.K.). He does provide one scene of biting commentary—when Baron Cohen’s despot appears before the U.N. and inadvertently draws parallels between tin-pot dictatorships and the U.S. The rest of the humor is “relentlessly immature,” but it’s still hilarious.
