The Dictator (2012)
Directed by Larry Charles
The heroic story of a dictator who risks his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed.
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23 films that influenced The Dictator
What critics say influenced The Dictator
I will say that there are fleeting moments of biting satirical genius that are reminiscent of the very clear inspiration of for this film Chaplin’s The Great Dictator ; But the 3 minutes of the film’s total success drown in (an albeit short – but drawn out) 84 minute running time.
The plucky nature of Baron Cohen’s protagonists harken back to Chaplin — and the easiest point of comparison is “The Great Dictator,” right down to the crude Western imitation of foreign language that forms Wadiya’s native tongue — but the creators of Wadiya owe a tremendous debt to “Duck Soup” and its own fictionalized dictatorship, Freedonia.
Certainly in 2012, a brutal dictator qualifies as an easy target for comedy (that wasn't true in 1940, when Charlie Chaplin released The Great Dictator , to which The Dictator implicitly nods).
A few thoughts present themselves: first, despite how apparently the movie wants to be regarded as a raunchy, 21st Century The Great Dictator , the film in which Charles Chaplin and Jack Oakie played such inspired parodies of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, there's no way for the film to breathe as much as a satire as it always seems that it wants to for the straightforward reason that Aladeen isn't a "real" dictator.
Cohen is subtly making his case to be known as the Charlie Chaplin of our time by echoing Chaplin's Hitler satire, The Great Dictator .
In “The Dictator” Cohen matches Charlie Chaplin’s teachable monologue from Chaplin’s 1940 masterpiece “The Great Dictator” with a third-act soliloquy that will ruffle more than a few feathers.
The plucky nature of Baron Cohen’s protagonists harken back to Chaplin — and the easiest point of comparison is “The Great Dictator,” right down to the crude Western imitation of foreign language that forms Wadiya’s native tongue — but the creators of Wadiya owe a tremendous debt to “Duck Soup” and its own fictionalized dictatorship, Freedonia.
Although the movie very casually follows the progress of the romance and the assassination scheme, Cohen and the director, Larry Charles , are about as dedicated to plot as the Marx Brothers; the movie's spiritual ancestor is " Duck Soup " and Groucho's Freedonian dictator Rufus T. Firefly.
In much the same way that the allegedly original schtick that Cohen employed in both "Borat" and "Bruno" was little more than a more vulgar variation of the comedic sensibility that the infinitely funnier and more incisive Andy Kaufman found himself publicly crucified for two decades earlier, "The Dictator" is a film that, despite the claims to its uniqueness, owes much of its existence to two of the most famous comedy films ever made--the Marx Brothers classic "Duck Soup" (1933) and Charlie Chaplin's landmark "The Great Dictator."
The thin plot obviously borrows heavily from other sources, including Eddie Murphy’s “Coming to America” and Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator.”
It worked for Eddie Murphy in "Coming to America," though his anti-misogynist African prince arrived in search of a soul mate.
Reminiscent of 1988′s Coming to America , Baron Cohen’s “Admiral General Aladeen, Supreme Leader, Chief Ophthalmologist, Invincible, All Triumphant, Beloved Oppressor of the People” travels to the States, to speak at the United Nations in New York City.
Meanwhile, the now-beardless Aladeen gets humbled in much the same way as Eddie Murphy’s benevolent royal in Coming To America , except instead of mopping up a McDonald’s, he teams up with Zoey (Anna Faris), the hippie proprietor of a Brooklyn organic grocery.
For his third starring vehicle, Baron Cohen's ditched his real-life guerilla attack routine but continues to embrace the same outrageous humor for a film that, while looking a lot like the dark side of Eddie Murphy's "Coming to America," is consistently funny on multiple levels and chock full of comic cameos.
Confined by a conventional narrative, The Dictator at times resembles the John Landis-Eddie Murphy fish-out-of-water comedies of the mid ‘80s, Trading Places and Coming to America—although SBC’s Aladeen is at once more hapless and offensive than Murphy.
Cohen’s joy in pushing boundaries with often unfunny material reminds of U.S. comic Tom Green (remember him?), who’s Freddy Got Fingered is often cited as one of the worst comedies of all time.
Yes, 2001's much-maligned Tom Green comedy " Freddy Got Fingered " crossed my mind on more than one occasion.
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It's all very cute and innocuous, reminding one of Woody Allen's first movie, "Take the Money and Run," but not as funny.
The vacuous media get a drilling in a couple of sequences recalling Being There (Hal Ashby, 1979) where two news anchors provide moronic ‘analysis’ of the erratic body language of Aladeen’s confused lookalike.
While the level of satire of The Dictator recalls Team America: World Police (Trey Parker, 2004) to the degree that no political viewpoint or belief is safe from being derided, The Dictator feels more strategic.
The rest of the movie is more like a tired Roman Holiday (1953) retread, with a pampered, sheltered ruler suddenly loose in a foreign city (New York) and disguised as a normal citizen.
It's the geopolitical-nightmare version of "Roman Holiday."
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As a comedy about despots, the movie has forebears in everything from Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" to that underrated Richard Dreyfus vehicle "Moon Over Parador."
The two most notable actors in the second category are Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers, and it is in their company that Sacha Baron Cohen belongs, though he has yet to make his Kind Hearts and Coronets or Dr Strangelove .