Being a huge fan of Sacha Baren Cohen’s faux-docs and his comedy in general, I was dismayed to find myself kind of hating the teaser for The Dictator, with its trite jokes and relative sense of tameness. While subsequent trailers and ads haven’t done a complete flip, I’ll say the looks I’ve seen have at least gotten gradually funnier. The same is the case for the opening two minutes of the movie, which is now available to view on YouTube. It’s the kind of breathless up-to-speed montage you’d expect, but there are some decent gags and it includes the longer version of the Olympics scene, which was certainly the funniest thing in the teaser.
My fingers are crossed that the more universal (or at least genuinely sharp-edged) humor drives this film instead of shit like hairy Kardashian jokes. I’ve heard vaguely good things from the film’s screening Vegas at CinemaCon, so at this point I’m confident the film’s not a totally tone-deaf disaster. It’s not looking likely that the film will live up the high benchmarks of Borat and Bruno however.
Maybe it’s all just me… how does The Dictator look to you?
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I had a bit of hope when I first saw the Olympic scene, but now I’m pretty sure this film will be crap, at least compared to Cohen’s others. A baby with a beard? That’s something to be emailed to the middle-aged ladies down at reception so they can have a good laugh between dancing kitties and a third doughnut. Changing positive and negative to the same word? The likes of Monty Python, for example, would have rattled that scene out in two or three seconds so it would seem hilarious when you got it a couple seconds into the next segment instead of lingering around for you to ponder the inanity of it. The rest seems like mediocre, middle-of-the-line humor. Still, I’ll probably see it as I am a fan of both Mr. Cohen and mockumentaries.
Yup, it looks kind of bad, but the Olympic scene does give one hope.
shitty? seriously? All the previews I have seen got at least a few good laughs from me. I can only imagine the crazy shit Cohen will do in the movie to make it rated R. The scene about the statue of liberty and the fireworks alone was hilarious. I think people are expecting or even demanding too much from this movie. There is a huge vein of comedy gold to be mined here. Will it be brilliant… who knows…. will it be funny… yes.
I enjoy him and will certainly support this fine motion picture until one week after it’s release, when he promises me my family will be released.
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