"Dictator" Inspires Cohen Eulogies: I'd Say They're Premature
Sacha Baron Cohen: Is He Over?
"Dictator" Inspires Cohen Eulogies: I'd Say They're Premature
Gary Thompson, Daily News Film Critic
Sacha Baron Cohen’s “The Dictator” has produced a couple of essays arguing that the movie represents the end of Sacha Baron Cohen as an important comedian.
Slate contends he’s lost his sense of anarchy, and a piece on “Grantland” (which correctly notes that Cohen’s new movie has a very Adam Sandler-ish note to it, a la “Zohan,” ) recounts his Ali G improv genius and contends that since then, returns have been diminishing rapidly.
It’s true to the movie is more conventional, traditional – some of the jokes go all the way back to Vaudeville. But there are things in “The Dictator” that I liked – the way Cohen uses his Gaddafi-like title character to satirize a general (pardon the pun) deterioration in leadership standards.
His Admiral/General is an overgrown child (all my friends have nuclear weapons, he says, in the midst of a tantrum) who reacts to dissent by eliminating it, and who confuses leadership with a selfish, ego-driven assertion of power and privilege. There is no moral framework for his actions. He does things because he can, and holds others accountable for his mistakes. There are more than a few Aladeen’s loose in society today; Cohen says as much, in Aladeen’s closing speech.
