The Dictator

The Dictator – Comedy isn’t pretty. Sacha Baron Cohen’s film about a North African dictator, conspicuously similar to Muammar Ghaddafi, is exceedingly vulgar and tasteless – jokes involve torture, masturbation, mutilation, airborne defecation, necrophilia. It’s also extremely funny and the script (by contrast with other big summer blockbusters) actually makes sense and demonstrates a warped sense of logic. As is the case with most successful comedies, the mise en scene is utilitarian and just barely functional; the camerawork is schematic and the characters are all grotesque or half-wits. Only about a third of the jokes hit the mark – the rest are awful or cringeworthy. But, once again, this is the mark of good comedy – two-thirds of Aristophanes is also juvenile, scatological, and unfunny. In this genre, you take risks. The risk is that more than half of the jokes won’t deliver any laughs. That’s the price you pay for the jokes that work. Don’t believe the priggish critics who tell you that this film is all wrong. It’s a comedy -- by definition it’s all wrong or, to use the vernacular, seriously fucked-up. But enough of it is funny for me to suggest that you pay some money and see this picture. There’s even a lecture about America that won’t make you laugh, but that should cause you some serious discomfort. Cohen’s Admiral General Aladeen laments the fact that he won’t be able to enjoy dictator parties with his buddies: Ghaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il, and Dick Cheney. And the movie is dedicated to the memory of Kim Jong Il. Here’s high praise: the movie is as funny as Woody Allen’s Bananas which it closely resembles. In fact, Cohen’s first three feature films are as good as Allen’s pictures in the late sixties and early seventies – it’s hit and miss, but the hits are hilarious.

(An additional note is warranted. At first, it seemed curious that big budget special effects films like The Avengers and Dark Shadows are so sloppy and overtly contemptuous of their audiences, while a trifle like The Dictator is carefully scripted and the narrative, although far-fetched, is certainly logical on its own terms. But, then, this distinction occurred to me. You have to “get” – that is, construe – a joke; you don’t have to “get” an explosion. Comedy, of course, is sometimes called “wit” and “wit” necessarily implies intelligence. The Dictator contains a variety of gags, some of them subtle and satirical, many requiring good knowledge of political and current events, many, of course, completely farcical, vulgar, and “low.” But, at least, some of the jokes require a modicum of intelligence on the part of the audience. This is not true of special effects – all you need is an eye disconnected from the brain.)