Admiral General Aladeen (Sasha Baron Cohen) is the dictator
of the fictitious North African Republic of Wadiya. After his attempts to build
nuclear weapons are announced he is summoned to the UN to explain his and his
country’s plans. While in
For his 4th feature, Baron Cohen has moved away
from the mocumentary style for which he has become synonymous and The Dictator is mostly played as a
straight forward comedy feature. The character of Aladeen is based on a hodgepodge
of various real life dictators and draws from the West’s perceptions of them
and their countries. The result is that Aladeen is a racist, sexist, cartoon
who while being occasionally funny, generally fails to impress. The humour of
the film on the whole failed to resonate with me and the majority of the
audience I saw it with, indeed a man on the row in front of me walked out about
an hour in having not laughed once.
