Dictator 2012
“You are standing on the edge of a bridge preparing to commit suicide wearing croques.” – “What’s wrong with wearing croques?” – “They are the universal symbol of a man who’s given up hope!”
Every film with this dialogue must have my love and patience, I will forgive the script and the actors a lot for spelling out what I have been thinking for years, in words I did not find myself. Actually. “The Dictator” does not even need a lot of forgiveness, it is rather laden with funny one- or two-liners, it is solidly raunchy and puts its finger on many of those habits and cultures that the western world developed over the years and that, more often than not, appear a bit stupid when looked upon from the outside. Political correctness is one of those, and Cohen is unforgiving about this scourge of civilisation – here we go, another reason to love him! He is playing his games with cliches about Americans, Arabs, Jews and Lesbians, Vegans and Terrorists, Tourists and Ben Kinglsey, and the ratio funny / not funny anymore never drops so low as to make the film boring. “Wait – what sorcery is this??” might be the most shallow sentence in the movie that made me laugh. “The police here are such fascists” – “yeah right, and not in a good way!” might be the one that made me laugh the hardest. It’s not about good taste, it’s about … I don’t know, being able to push the right buttons, and stepping on the right toes. I have to say, maybe he did that better here than in the previous films I have seen.
thomas4cinema 