2012 Review #29: The Dictator

 It's been a while since I posted anything on here. I've been on vacation from work you see and I just got distracted way to easily way to many times and have not had the energy to post new movie reviews. I'm still on my vacation and I'm still lacking the enthusiasm to post anything but I don't want to fall behind. So these next two movie reviews will be short and will not be formatted the same as usual. Call me lazy, call me whatever you want. I don't care. Just be warned, the next couple reviews will not be my best.  So without further ado.

The Dictator stars Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat, Sweeney Todd) who I'm sure most of you remember as Borat a few years back. Now when Borat first came out it was unlike any comedy most of us had experienced before. It was partially scripted, partially unscripted and ad-libed. A lot of the people he encountered in the movie were not aware exactly what was going on, so the reactions were genuine. The movie was raunchy, foul mouthed, and just plain insane but it was fresh and damn hilarious. There has been talks of a Borat 2...but only time will tell if that is actually true.

The Dictator is one of Cohen's many characters he has portrayed in the past, but now he's one of the few who get's his own movie. The story follows his dictator character who travels to America but is then kidnapped and has his signature beard shaven and then thrown back into New York city trying to convince people he is the real dictator. Oscar winner Ben Kinglsey (Gandhi, Hugo) plays his right hand man who betrays him and swaps in a fake dictator to take the place of Cohen. OK it's not big on story, but obviously that's not what you want from a movie like this. You want funny.

You know what though? I didn't think it was all that funny either. I mean yes, it certainly had it's moments, but they seemed sporadic and inconsistent. Since Borat debuted we have seen a handful of raunchy, out there comedies and The Dictator gives us nothing new. And it's completely scripted too, it doesn't have any of that off the cusp, unplanned moments like Borat had. The writing here was not good, just a lot of poor joke telling. I mean, we have seen plenty of dick jokes, plenty of lesbian and gay jokes, plenty of crude humor about having sex with many women, blah blah blah. It just wasn't funny. It wasn't awkward either. One of the best parts of Borat was that it was incredibly uncomfortable to sit through, but in a good way.

I don't know folks, if you are looking for a good comedy to see right now, I could not honestly suggest The Dictator, but you are your own people and you have your own thoughts. Everyone's sense of humor is different.