THE DICTATOR, directed by Larry Charles, starring Sacha Baron Cohen, Anna Faris, and Ben Kingsley.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Dictator\u201d is outrageously over the top hilarious; Sacha Baron Cohen\u2019s character, the heavily bearded Admiral General Aladeen, in a militaristic, be-ribboned white suit and cap, is the dictator of the fictional oil-rich country of Wadiya.\u00a0 In a speech about democracy vs a dictatorship, he riles up the crowd by asking if they want to live in a country that spies on its citizens, arrests them without charge, and imprisons them indefinitely; and also assassinates its citizens who happen to be friends or relatives of suspected terrorists who are in another country at the time.\u00a0 Hopefully, the audience gets that Aladeen is talking about America, espousing truths that no mainstream media would dare touch.\u00a0 The self-important major TV newscasts anchors reporting on Aladeen\u2019s every move are portrayed as a bunch of well-groomed, clueless nitwits.
\nAladeen\u2019s handlers hire an imposter because Aladeen has decapitated so many detractors that Wadiyans want him killed.\u00a0 On the lam, Aladeen ends up in New York dressed in the rags of a homeless person; he runs into fellow countryman Nadal (Jason Mantzoukas), whom he thought he\u2019d ordered be-headed.\u00a0 Nadal now owns a restaurant called Death to Aladeen. He then gets involved with an organic foods co-op run by Zoey (a gamin Anna Faris), who outfits the 6 ft 4 Cohen in a Take Back the Night T-shirt and baggy, baby-blue, thigh-length shorts.\u00a0 Without even trying, Zoey innocently and naively effects a major change in him.
\nThe film touches on the US dealing with the Wadiyan nuclear enrichment program; the push for an Arab Spring democracy in dictatorships.\u00a0 Cohen leaves no sensitive issue unscathed such as female infanticide, women\u2019s rights (women, generally), police brutality, racism- Blacks, Jews, Asians, and more.\u00a0 Still you will not hear an anti-Muslim peep.\u00a0 There’s some bathroom and high-school jock humor throughout, but the concept is like a Michael Moore documentary only totally fictionalized with bizarre characters, dialogue and scenes.\u00a0 Ben Kingsley plays Tamir, Aladeen\u2019s right hand man who plots to overthrow him.\u00a0 He is a dead-ringer for Hamid Karzai, complete with hat and cape, and the only character who plays it absolutely straight.\u00a0 The audience in the theatre was mostly women and we all laughed out loud throughout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE DICTATOR, directed by Larry Charles, starring Sacha Baron Cohen, Anna Faris, and Ben Kingsley. \u201cThe Dictator\u201d is outrageously over the top hilarious; Sacha Baron Cohen\u2019s character, the heavily bearded…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[837],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1318","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-joe-cillo"},"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":true,"span_bottom":"