When you make a movie about a half-insane, completely clueless ruler, obviously you’re going to step on a few toes right from the get-go. With a loving dedication to Kim Jong-il at its beginning, The Dictator kicks things off in just the perfect manner.

The nation of Wadiya has been under the thumb of Admiral General Hafez Aladeen (Sacha Baron Cohen) for far too long. Rather than concern himself with the well-being of the people in his country, the brutal leader spends his days playing the Nintendo Wii, giving herpes to American celebrities, and executing the members of his staff willy-nilly. His other concern is sending a message to the rest of the world that he is a force to be reckoned with, which comes through absolutely when the United Nations intervenes about Aladeen’s tendency to stock up on heavy artillery and nukes. While in New York to address these concerns, the spoiled sovereign is ambushed and replaced with a puppet decoy, forced to live as yet another penniless resident of the streets of the Big Apple while his treacherous right-hand man (Ben Kingsley) schemes to completely change Wadiya’s policies.

After playing the animated lemur King Julian in the Madagascar series, Baron Cohen is already well-versed in the ways of the affected ruler who’s more than a little bit of an asshole. Of course, it’s more than just slapping on Aladeen’s bushy beard, which bears quite the resemblance to his pubic hair, it’s the channeling of late dictators like Muammar el-Qadaffi and Saddam Hussein and turning them into someone who’s still functional as a real person. After all, he may be able to force Megan Fox, Katy Perry, Ellen DeGeneres, and Oprah into his bedchambers but true love is another question. Yet despite the odds, he may have found the gal of his dreams with flower child and food co-op manager Zoey (Anna Faris) — that is, if he can get her to abandon her ideology regarding silly things like political correctness, feminism, and most abhorrent of all in his view, respect for everyone. Kingsley, playing almost the exact same role he did in Prince of Persia, offers little as Aladeen’s uncle Tamir, who swaps his nephew with a dimwitted shepherd look-alike in order to get a Wadiyan constitution underway so that he can declare the country’s massive oil reserves open for business. Looks like everyone’s out to screw somebody in one way or another whether you live in the USA or a fictitious North African republic.

Baron Cohen provides a pretty good send-up of the foreign view of Americans as either PC to a fault or always under the assumption that all brown people are terrorists whether they’re a crazy, self-centered faux leader or not. Interestingly enough, with names like Osama bin Laden floating around, you never hear those of 20th century villains like Benito Mussolini, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, or Adolf Hitler. The objective that Charlie Chaplin had in goofing on Der Führer in The Great Dictator isn’t something that can be attained here, since everyone comparable to Aladeen has been killed off in the last few years. Instead, this feels like a more scripted version of Borat sans the mockumentary style with just as much of Baron Cohen’s trademark crudeness, including the main character’s theme song complete with the refrain “Aladeen, motherfucka!” Admittedly, the comedian hits a new pinnacle in edginess with a scene that gives us an in-depth view inside a pregnant woman’s (Kathryn Hahn) uterus. That’s definitely not a good place to lose your cell phone, but that doesn’t mean you need to throw away her newborn baby girl. And, if you think that’s as far as the misogyny goes, wait until you hear Aladeen utter the line, “What are you having: a boy or an abortion?”

When I first saw Borat, I laughed ‘til I cried. With The Dictator, I laughed ‘til I stopped. The newer movie is no less funny, but the fact that it uses the same dick and fart gags doesn’t help it, especially when the hero is much less likable. What’s funnier — a guy with a beard complaining about the price of Internet access in his hotel room, or a slightly different guy with a mustache washing his face with toilet water?

Rating: 2.5 out of 4 stars

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