The Dictator (2012 film)

The Dictator is a 2012 political satire black comedy film co-written by and starring Sacha Baron Cohen in his fourth feature film in a leading role. The film was directed by Larry Charles, who also directed Baron Cohen's mockumentaries Borat and Brüno. Baron Cohen, in the role of Admiral General Aladeen, the dictator of the fictional Republic of Wadiya visiting the United States, stars alongside Anna Faris, Ben Kingsley, and Jason Mantzoukas, with uncredited appearances by John C. Reilly, Garry Shandling, and Edward Norton.
Producers Jeff Schaffer and David Mandel said that Baron Cohen's character was inspired by real-life dictators with personality cults like Kim Jong Il, Idi Amin, Muammar Gaddafi, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, Mobutu Sese Seko, and Saparmurat Niyazov. The film's opening credits sarcastically dedicate it "in loving memory" to Kim Jong Il, who died in 2011. It received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $190.2 million.
For years, the East African republic of Wadiya is ruled by dictator Omar Aladeen, and later succeeded by his antisemitic son Admiral-General Haffaz Aladeen. He surrounds himself with female bodyguards, sponsors terrorism, changes many words in the Wadiyan dictionary to "Aladeen", and develops nuclear weapons to be used against Israel. He also refuses to sell Wadiya's oil fields, a promise he made to Omar before the latter's death. After the United Nations Security Council resolves to intervene militarily, Aladeen travels to the UN Headquarters in New York City to address the council.
Shortly after arriving, Aladeen is kidnapped by Clayton, supposedly in charge of the security preparations but actually a hitman hired by Aladeen's uncle Tamir Mafraad, whom Omar passed over as successor in favor of Aladeen. Tamir then replaces Aladeen with a decoy; a dim-witted shepherd named Efawadh whom he intends to manipulate into signing a document democratizing Wadiya while opening up the oil fields to foreign interests. Aladeen escapes after Clayton accidentally burns himself to death in a failed torture attempt. When his burnt corpse is discovered, Tamir thinks that Aladeen has been killed. Meanwhile, Aladeen is practically unrecognizable, as his beard has been shaved off by Clayton.
Wandering through New York City in civilian clothes, Aladeen assumes the false identity of "Allison Burgers" and encounters Zoey, a human rights activist who offers him a job at her progressive, alternative lifestyle cooperative. Aladeen refuses the offer and encounters Nadal, the former chief of Wadiya's nuclear weapons programme, whom Aladeen thought he had previously executed over an argument about the missile design. Aladeen follows him to New York's "Little Wadiya" district, which is populated by refugees from his own country, and meets him in "Death to Aladeen Restaurant", a restaurant run by and visited by people whom Aladeen had ordered to be executed. After a failed attempt to cover up his identity, Aladeen is accused of being an "Aladeen sympathizer" by the waiter and nearby visitors. Nadal saves Aladeen from being attacked and reveals that all the people who had been ordered to be executed are instead sent into exile to the United States, as the executioners are actually a resistance. Nadal agrees to help Aladeen regain his power, on condition that Aladeen makes him head of Wadiya's nuclear programme again. Aladeen later accepts Zoey's job offer, as she is catering at the hotel where the signing is to occur. Aladeen grows closer to Zoey and eventually falls in love with her. Turning around Zoey's struggling business, Aladeen begins imposing strict schedules on everyone, forming a personality cult around Zoey and intimidating an inspector into giving the store a good review.
However, Aladeen's relationship with Zoey becomes strained after he decides to reveal his true self to her; she cannot love a man who was so brutal to his own people. After acquiring a new beard taken from a corpse, Aladeen ziplines into the hotel and talks to Efawadh, who was fooled into thinking that the Supreme Leader was ill. At the signing ceremony, Aladeen tears up Tamir's document in front of the media and holds an impassioned speech praising the virtues of dictatorship. However, upon seeing Zoey in the room, he declares his love for her and, knowing her strongly-held views, vows to democratize Wadiya and open up the oil fields for business, but in a way where the general populace will benefit. Furious, Tamir attempts to shoot Aladeen. Efawadh saves Aladeen, getting shot in the head in the process, but survives, and Tamir is arrested.
A year later, Wadiya holds its first democratic elections, although they are rigged in favor of Aladeen (who has now added the title "President-Prime Minister" to his previous Admiral-General). Afterwards, he marries Zoey, but is shocked when she breaks a glass with her foot and reveals herself to be Jewish. Meanwhile, Aladeen's convoy now consists of eco-friendly cars, Nadal is re-instated, and Zoey reveals in an interview that she is pregnant with the couple's first child. Aladeen responds to the news by asking if Zoey is having "a boy or an abortion".
The unrated cut of The Dictator runs an additional fifteen minutes from the original 83-minute theatrical version. Much of the added material is additional sexual content and dialogue. There is a scene following Aladeen falling asleep in the back of the store where one of his bodyguards, Etra, tries to kill him by beating him with her enlarged breasts on orders by Tamir. Another added scene is Mr. Ogden, the manager of the Lancaster Hotel, talking to Zoey at The Collective and cancelling the catering contract because of Aladeen.
Paramount Pictures described the film as "the heroic story of a North African dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed." Paramount said the film was inspired by the novel Zabibah and the King by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, though The New York Times later reported it is not an adaptation. Kristen Wiig and Gillian Jacobs had been considered for the role that Anna Faris eventually played and which Variety said "calls for strong improvisational skills". Baron Cohen, who also plays Efawadh in the film, based his performance primarily on Libya's Muammar Gaddafi. The film is dedicated to Kim Jong-il who died in December 2011.
Morocco had been considered as a filming location. Location shooting took place at the Plaza de España in Seville and on the island of Fuerteventura, Spain, and in New York City from June to August 2011. Baron Cohen said the United Nations refused to let him film scenes inside the UN Headquarters and claimed they explained this by saying, "we represent a lot of dictators, and they are going to be very angry by this portrayal of them, so you can't shoot in there." When asked about it, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman commented by saying only, "Sacha Baron Cohen has a wonderful sense of humor." The United Nations shots were at a soundstage at Grumman Studios in Bethpage, New York.
Although Aladeen is portrayed as antisemitic and wishes to destroy Israel, the "Wadiyan" language he speaks throughout the film is actually Hebrew, as Baron Cohen is himself Jewish.
A version of the trailer was made for a Super Bowl XLVI commercial in February 2012. Archival news footage of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and David Cameron in the beginning of the trailer are excerpts of their 2011 speeches condemning Colonel Gaddafi.
Internet rumors claimed the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had banned Baron Cohen from attending the 84th Academy Awards in his role as Admiral General Aladeen, but the academy said the rumors were unfounded, saying, "We haven't banned him. We're just waiting to hear what he's going to do", and specifying of the publicity stunt: "We don't think it's appropriate. But his tickets haven't been pulled. We're waiting to hear back." Baron Cohen eventually appeared at the awards' red carpet with a pair of uniformed female bodyguards (resembling Gaddafi's Amazonian Guard) and wielding an urn purportedly containing the ashes of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, which the actor spilled onto E! host Ryan Seacrest. The ashes were later reported to be pancake mix.
Baron Cohen appeared in character on the May 5, 2012, episode of Saturday Night Live during the "Weekend Update" segment, in which he appeared to torture film critics A. O. Scott and Roger Ebert to give the film positive reviews, as well as seemingly holding director Martin Scorsese hostage. Baron Cohen released a video in the wake of the 2012 French presidential election, congratulating François Hollande on his victory, and appeared in character with the pair of uniformed female bodyguards on the May 7, 2012 episode of The Daily Show.
A publicity prank involved fake invitations that arrived at mailboxes in Washington D.C., according to which "President Robert Mugabe and the Ministry of Education, Sport, Art, and Culture invite you to the Premiere of The Dictator." The screening of the film would purportedly take place at Mugabe's palace in Zimbabwe on May 12.
The film score was composed by Sacha Baron Cohen's brother, Erran Baron Cohen. The Dictator – Music from the Motion Picture was released on May 8, 2012, by Aladeen Records.
"Mundian To Bach Ke" by Panjabi MC and Jay-Z was featured in the trailers. "Hey Baby (Drop It to the Floor)" by Pitbull was featured in the second trailer.
Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 57% based on 222 reviews, and a rating average 5.90/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Wildly uneven but consistently provocative, The Dictator is a decent entry in the poli-slapstick comedy genre." On Metacritic, the film was given score of 58 out of 100 based on 41 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore during opening weekend gave the film an average grade of "C" on a scale ranging from A+ to F.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of a possible four, saying, "The Dictator is funny, in addition to being obscene, disgusting, scatological, vulgar, crude and so on. Having seen Sacha Baron Cohen promoting it on countless talk shows, I feared the movie would feel like déjà vu. But no. He establishes a claim to be the best comic filmmaker now working. And in a speech about dictatorships, he practices merciless political satire." Slant Magazine conversely concluded, "bound to be one of the year's biggest comedy letdowns, The Dictator doesn't so much stir hot-button issues as showcase a great satirist off his game." Keith Uhlich of Time Out approved, giving it four stars out of five, and calling the opening scenes in the film "a brisk, hilarious jeremiad" and its ending monologue "a rousing, uproarious climactic speech worthy of both Chaplin and Team America."
Several reviews noted that the Marx Brothers' 1933 film, Duck Soup, inspired parts of Baron Cohen's 2012 film. Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club noted that "Admiral General Aladeen and Rufus T. Firefly share the same bloodline, representing a more generalized contempt for world leaders of any stripe, whether they don a 'supreme beard' or a greasepaint moustache." Scott Wilson of the Nashville Scene detected "an echo here of that funniest of xenophobe-baiting funnies, Duck Soup." Peter Travers of the Rolling Stone claimed that Baron Cohen's film "dodges soothing convention and ultimately merits comparisons to the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup and Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator."
The Irish Examiner wrote that “Sacha Baron Cohen atones for the sins of 'Bruno' with this gleefully bad-taste fish-out-of-water comedy, which kicks sand in the eye of political correctness” and that “no subject is off limits – the September 11 attacks, rape, sexual equality, Judaism – and Larry Charles's film tramples merrily over social taboos, hitting more targets than it misses as the titular despot runs amok in the capitalist playground of New York City.“
The Times argued that “with The Dictator, Sacha Baron Cohen makes a radical break with the comedic style of his past films. Gone is the con-man comedian, fooling celebrities and the public with fictional characters. Gone, too, is the mockumentary style that he and his director on Borat, Bruno and now this film, Larry Charles, made their own. The Dictator is the kind of conventional feature that Peter Sellers, Tony Hancock or even Mike Myers could have made.” The publication also claimed that “it's likely to offend prudes of both the sexually and politically correct persuasions.”
The Washington Post wrote that “Cohen has thankfully dispensed with ambushing real-life people for squirm-inducing interviews. But an early stunt involving a Wii game based on the 1972 Munich Olympics falls flatter than a stale matzo, a running gag about Hollywood stars selling sexual favors quickly loses steam and it can be stipulated that rape jokes simply aren't funny.”
The film is banned in several member-countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), in particular nations with real-life leaders commonly described as dictators. In Belarus, there is said to be an informal ban on showing the film, but state officials denied this referring to a shortage of cinemas equipped to show the film, which was distributed exclusively in digital format. Authorities in Tajikistan concluded The Dictator was incompatible with the nation's "mentality". As for other states, the film was described as "unlikely" to be shown in Turkmenistan, shortened to 71 minutes by the censorship in Uzbekistan, and banned from screens two weeks after its premiere in Kazakhstan.
Outside of the CIS, only the censored version of the film was released in Pakistan, and the film was reportedly blocked from cinemas in Malaysia. In Italy, the reference to the "Italian Prime Minister" in the scene with Megan Fox was substituted by a generic "politician" to avoid reference to the then-president of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Republic, Silvio Berlusconi.
The film has been described by some critics as being Islamophobic, particularly noting the pronounced stereotype of Middle Eastern dictators, who are mostly Muslims. It is also reported to negatively portray stereotypical views about Arabs through visual symbols and attributes within characters and settings. Aladeen himself portrays a stereotypical Muslim Arab ruler identity; his iconic beard and traditional Middle Eastern traits are things that allow audiences to link his character to Arabs and Muslims. This is considered controversial because of the connection between Aladeen and bin Laden throughout the film, where both visual and auditory components suggest that there is a close friendship between the two. However, the controversial stance and negative depiction of bin Laden further reinforces the idea that Arab dictators are terrorists and "barbaric". The film further allows for the generic and stereotypical ideas of Muslims and Arabs as backwards, which can be seen through the visual comparisons between the West and the East. For instance, during Aladeen's visit to New York, he and his men arrive riding camels, whereas the background of the city depict cars and other modern modes of transportation. Furthermore, another misleading portrayal of Arabs is demonstrated through Aladeen's hyper-sexuality, particularly the scenes where he is surrounded by his "harem", multiple women engaging intimately, which supports stereotypical exotic images of Arab women.
Some negative critiques claim that an Orientalists' view of the "other" can also be seen in the exterior portrayal of Wadiya, where visual elements portray Arab countries as backwards. Wadiya encompasses a variety of unique qualities found in Arab regions; for example, it is set in a desert climate and, more prevalent, its architectural design is heavily inspired by Ottoman and Islamic motif. The visual cues direct audiences to associate "barbaric" dictators to Arab and Muslim countries that resemble Wadiya.
Wadiya's flag is also said to resemble the flag of Iraq due to both flags having similar lettering, which suggests that these depictions of Wadiya as "the Orient", an inferior nation to those of the "West", further exemplifies how Hollywood and Western media view and represent the East, especially when there is a political agenda at play. This is also reflected through Aladeen's intention of developing nuclear weapons to use against Western nations and Israel, further demonizing Arab nations, according to some negative critiques of the film.