Sacha Baron Cohen is back with more distracting facial hair, another laughable accent and some of that crass physical comedy the masses seem to love.
In The Dictator, Cohen plays a character named General Aladeen, a thinly veiled version of Saddam Hussein. General Aladeen is "a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed." Leave it to Cohen, our most ardent proponent of "is it hateful or is it funny" comedy, to find the humor in tyranny.
Cohen will be aided and abetted in his search for the lighter side of oppression by Larry Charles, who directed him to box office success in Borat and Brüno. The Dictator also stars Anna Faris, John C. Reilly, Sir Ben Kingsley, J. B. Smoove and a delightfully mercenary Megan Fox.
Cohen's films are polarizing. Are they mean-spirited? Are they smart? Are they stupid? Are they satire? I dunno. That's for the movie-going public to decide. I do know that people love them, people hate them, and people love to hate them.
Personally, I hate to love them. When I watch one of Cohen's flicks, I groan as often as I giggle. I know I'm going to laugh, but I'm not going to feel good about it. And I imagine that's how I'll feel about The Dictator. It won't be great, but it'll definitely be better than 90 minutes in Abu Ghraib…probably.
Those jokes are pretty broad but I did have a giggle.
I just hope Cohen can stretch that out to a decent feature. He tried that with Ali G and failed miserably.
My favorite Cohen work was the HBO Ali G show. Too bad that whole character was predicated on no one knowing it was a put-on. It was born to die a quick death.
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A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it's not open.
Sacha Baron Cohen is back with more distracting facial hair, another laughable accent and some of that crass physical comedy the masses seem to love.
Those jokes are pretty broad but I did have a giggle.
I just hope Cohen can stretch that out to a decent feature. He tried that with Ali G and failed miserably.