Goddammit, sometimes the Devil plays havoc with me.
Here I was blissfully mowing my lawn this afternoon (and in a spirit of charity of my foreclosed neighbor’s as well) under a weak mid-Atlantic sun when there came about an insatiable Fandango itch to check what new movies were releasing this Friday.
Holy moly, The Dictator was releasing today.
Abandoning my foreclosed neighbor’s overgrown weeds to the mercies of the town authorities, I rushed to see if Sacha Baron Cohen was going to repeat a Borat.
Harrison Ford was Right
Sitting through The Dictator, it suddenly dawned on me how right Harrison Ford was.
Notwithstanding all the ooohs and aaahs over his Indiana Jones, I’ve always considered Harrison Ford a walking, talking advertisement for lobotomy surgery.
That is, you can have your brains removed in full and still fool people with the appearance of a normal human being.
But I consider Ford a genius for one thing and for one thing only – for telling Sacha Baron Cohen to Fuck Off when the British actor tried to ambush him with an interview while filming Brüno.
Fuck Off Sacha, Fuck Off Sacha, Fuck Off Sacha…..I kept repeating while wearily sitting through his latest misadventure The Dictator.
Rarely funny, frequently crude, offensively obscene and mostly tasteless, The Dictator reminded me of Bollywood films where the hero (often Akshay Kumar) pre-warns fans to leave their brains at home before heading for his movies.
Even that insane strategy wouldn’t work here because The Dictator is so hopelessly crude and trashy.
Besides acting as the film’s eponymous dictator, Sacha is also guilty of co-writing and co-producing this piece of junk.
Poor Writing
An ugly old Irish crone once told me that writing is hard.
To which yours truly adds, writing humor is infinitely harder.
The dividing line between crude humor and crude garbage can be measured in microns.
The Dictator’s main problem is that Sacha crosses that line far too often, flinging an ‘unfunny’ curse on the comedy.
The principal villain of the Dictator is in the hopelessly mediocre writing.
Except for rare moments that evoked a mild smile but certainly not guffaws, it’s a trial to sit through The Dictator, which is centered around the antics of Admiral General Aladeen, dictator of the fictional North African nation of Wadiya.
On the verge of developing nuclear capability, Wadiya has been placed under sanctions and is at risk of imminent military strikes from the United States unless Aladeen addresses the United Nation and turns a democratic leaf.
And so Aladeen, like all of of Sacha’s previous characters, comes to America, where much of the film is set.
The sight of the immensely talented fine British actor Krishna Bhanji aka Ben Kingsley, who plays the dictator’s Uncle Tamir, kissing the dictator’s armpits and then getting kissed by him on the lips is proof that some members of the Homo Sapiens will stoop to anything, anything to hear the jingling of a few silver coins in their pockets.
Pint-sized Anna Faris brings great verve and energy to her role of activist and ‘green’ grocery store manager Zoey while Jason Mantzoukas turns in an animated performance as Nadal, the ‘executed’ head of Wadiya’s nuclear agency.
Alas, all in vain for the movie is 99% about the Wadiya dictator’s antics, where the movie falls flat.
Unlike Anna and Jason, Sacha, the pivot of this film, merely went through the motions, never once making me sit up in my chair.
Being a Sacha Baron Cohen movie, nudity, masturbation, scatology, racism, sexism and assorted vulgarity are de rigueuer but seldom are any of them funny.
During my visit, the movie hall was mostly empty and I rarely heard any laughter suggesting I had other companions in misery, who too were sitting suffering through this so-called comedy.
All in all, The Dictator wasted my time and money and left me with an unkempt lawn.
Your favorite blog SearchIndia.com strongly urges you to stay away from The Dictator (not that I expect you chutiyas to even consider watching a Hollywood comedy).
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