Sacha Baron Cohen, Britain's ballsiest comic actor, returns to the big screen with yet another outrageous character. Having exhausted his established characters (Ali G, Borat and Bruno), he now presents us with an entirely original creation - psychotic dictator Admiral General Aladeen. The narrative revolves around the general's mission to travel to America in order to defend his right to oppress his beloved country, Wadiya. However, upon arriving in New York, Aladeen finds himself in the midst of an assassination attempt and, upon escaping, he must learn to live as an ordinary person whilst seeking to win back his identity. Unlike Cohen's aforementioned alter-egos, which were tried and tested on the small screen for years before hitting the cinemas, the never-before-seen Aladeen was a distinct gamble.
And in my view, Cohen lost the bet. While effectively lampooning tyrants such as Colonel Gadaffi, Cohen's Aladeen emanates far too much broad comedy, suffocating the underlying razor-sharp satire. Indeed, while scenes such as Aladeen breaking into giggles whilst attempting to justify his ownership of a nuclear missile, and his impassioned yet ironic speech about the differences between dictatorship and democracy demonstrate Cohen's trademark skewering abilities, the few-too-many crude jokes and lazy stereotypes make for a cringe-filled viewing experience.
Perhaps The Dictator's main downfall is the fact that, unlike Cohen's previous fly-on-the-wall approaches, his new outing is a conventional narrative-based feature. While the likes of Borat found its comedic strength in Cohen's unique ability to improvise effortlessly without breaking character, teasing comedy out of his targets and revealing society's major flaws and prejudices in the process, The Dictator must stick to a script that, quite frankly, isn't very good. In addition to the poor writing efforts, the character of Aladeen just isn't as well-realised as Cohen's other creations, which he spent years perfecting, and appears to have simply stepped out of a bad Saturday Night Live sketch. Meanwhile, Anna Faris seems exploited by a script that envisions her as a hairy armpitted, whining hippy-type, while Ben Kingsley is similarly demeaned as Aladeen's sour-faced, treacherous advisor.
The finished film ultimately has the feel of a bad episode of South Park; a narrative that contains some truly hilarious absurdist moments (a falling turd knocking a woman unconscious and some childish antics involving a severed head) and some utterly merciless satire (the film is "dedicated to the loving memory of Kim Jong-Il), but is carried along the way by wank gags, slapstick cliches and lazy humour (a stupid character survives a bullet to the head; Aladeen cries "he's lucky, it hit him in the brain!" Sigh.). Sad to see such an intelligent, versatile comedian off his game but, let's face it, with Cohen's back catalogue, he can afford this one misfire.
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