Movie Poster

Why are you guys so anti-dictators? Imagine if America was a dictatorship. You could let 1% of the people have all the nation's wealth. You could help your rich friends get richer by cutting their taxes. And bailing them out when they gamble and lose. You could ignore the needs of the poor for health care and education. Your media would appear free, but would secretly be controlled by one person and his family. You could wiretap phones. You could torture foreign prisoners. You could have rigged elections. You could lie about why you go to war. You could fill your prisons with one particular racial group, and no one would complain. You could use the media to scare the people into supporting policies that are against their interests.

Previous Larry Charles reviews:

• Brüno
• Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

# Review

Sacha Baron Cohen takes on a new satirical character; this time he’s Admiral-General Haffaz Aladeen, a childish and anti-Western dictador of the fictional North African state of Wadiya.

The film is akin to Ali G as it’s entirely scripted and it also provides satirical political commentary. Cohen parodies dictatorial regimes and explores topics such as international relations and cultural stereotypes. As with Ali G, the commentary is mostly at a very superficial level but it is still timely and funny.

Cohen plays a decent Aladeen while Anna Faris’ Zoey and Jason Mantzoukas’ "Nuclear" Nadal make decent supporting characters. Ben Kingsley also plays an OK villain. As with many of Cohen’s previous works, the acting isn’t the main selling point of the films; the comedy is. To that effect, the film delivers quite well. While the comedy is not as offensive and edgy as that of Ali G, there are some bits that are pretty hilarious. This film had quite a large budget compared to Cohen's earlier films. On one hand, it allowed the film to have unique marketing tactics, such as releasing an entire music album filled with real music. On the other hand, the film had to appeal to a much broader audience to make back the investment; the humour feels a bit dumbed down to appeal to a more general audience than some of Cohen's non-scripted films.

# Conclusion

Not as hilarious as the previous films, but still has an interesting premise with funny bits.

# Overall rating: 7.5

What does the rating mean?