The Dictator

Larry Charles latest collaboration with ever-publicized comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, The Dictator, is funnier than you think, but even at a cramped 83 minute running time, it still manages to feel rather overlong, and a tad forced. Still, The Dictator is a embracingly stupid, crude, disturbing and overall utterly ridiculous raunchfest, which is certainly sure to satisfy it's prime targets, with me being included. While ti certainly wasn't as good as Borat, or even Bruno, the Dictator is a decent enough comedy to watch during this years summer movie season, as more or less a comical alternative, or break, to all of those big budget summer movie action blockbusters that are going to be coming in drove for the next few months, now. Now, the Dictator tell's the "heroic" story of how general Alladeen (Sacha Baron Cohen) managed to stand up for what he believed in in order to change the face of his country, which is dictatorship, communism, anti-freedom and civil rights. Now, since General Alladeen manages to take a bit of a tour through New York City during during 90% of the movies running time, and that some of the fish out of water jokes are a bit tired, including some frequent banter with co-star Ann Faris, the two of them still keep the film fully afloat, not to mention with a bit of help from the other cast members, which include Ben Kingsley (imagine that!) and numerous hilarious cameos from celebrities, including Megan Fox, Edward Norton and others. But, since this movie is Rated R, parents need to be aware of the type of content that Sacha Baron Cohen deals with as a comedian, and that he has been dealing with in his past two films, but, here we go: The film contains a literal non-stop barrage of strong crude and sexual content throughout, which includes a very brief scene of a woman's breasts being milked, thong and bra-clad slaves being told to pleasure a man, a extremely graphic but comical birth scene where we see several shots of the inside of a woman's vagina, with several objects including a cell phone and two peoples hands being inserted into it; also, there are several shots of full frontal male nudity of the main lead, with most of them being close-ups, and will make most people in the audience terribly uncomfortable, but it is all very funny stuff; and, finally, there is even a scene where the main character is taught how to masturbate, which involves bizarre images of what he is masturbating to, overly-exaggerated shots of his outrageous arm movements, and even several shots of his semen covered tissue paper. Also, there is some occasional violent content, including several very graphic, but very crude and funny images of a mans decapitated head being used as the pawn in several jokes. And, finally, there is frequent but fairly average profanity for a R Rated movie, but it does include several uses each of f--k, sh-t, d-mn, h-ll, b-tch and b-strd. So, even though The Dictator had me laughing frequently, and hard, it just wasn't enough to make the entire movie completely worth paying for, but as I see it, it is still definitely a must for fans of Sacha Baron Cohen, just like me.