'The Dictator' film review

Cuddle hungry General Aladeen (Sacha Baron Cohen) falls in love with tomboy-looking Zoey (Anna Faris) in an awkward-sour-sweet manner when he gets lost in New York City in his attempt to replace his double at the Lancaster Hotel before making a global political announcement. The moment he delivers this speech is the gray part of this film. So it will either be your least or most favorite scene since your reaction to this production will be in direct correlation with your like/dislike of Cohen and the rest of his movies.

With a disturbing mix of reviews, this movie, and more directly Cohen himself, walks around a thin line that divides satire and racism. And by walking around, I mean he crosses, comes back, and crosses it at a different point, comes back and does it all over again.

His most famous films, the Borat and Bruno documentaries, inclined directly to satire. This film’s attempt to follow that trail fails catastrophically, resulting in straight up racism. He manages to insult just about everyone: Jews, Americans, Middle Easterners, Blacks and women.

The only thing you have left to do is simply ignore it as much as you can. It remains the easiest and most uncomplicated way to watch this movie. Fortunately, it contains an actual, controlled and (forgiven) predictable script that allows you to enjoy Anna Faris and her hairy armpits.

I've never been a fan of this guy or his films but this one remained more entertaining than any of his earlier works whenever Faris is around, or when he's learning to masturbate and any other time he is not insulting people and creating all kinds of cultural socio-political tension. It's not often but I definitely tried to make the most it.