The Dictator (2012) - 3 stars out of 10

The Dictator (2012) - 3 stars out of 10

"The Dictator" is a one-trick pony whose trick isn't very entertaining.  I was expecting another edition of "Borat" but this was more like "Bore-FLAT."  There is something to be said for candidly offending people on camera by acting like an ignorant foreigner, but it isn't the same when all of the offensive actions are scripted and the victims are actors whose outraged reactions are also scripted.  It does have its moments.  It starts off so strong with the newsreel about Aladeen's life - the Olympics, his mother dying at childbirth, the patient who is HIV-Aladden... but then they realized that they had to have a plot instead of a long stream of vignettes that showed how idiotic the main character is.  In retrospect, I wish that they would've just gone with the vignettes.  I don't think that anybody would claim this film's strength to be it's plot or its character development.  It is a prime example of the Family Guy effect, where they brainstormed a bunch of funny situations and then wrote the plot as a means of loosely tying them together.  The helicopter sequence is hilarious in the worst possible way, and the severed head is one of the funniest running gags I've ever seen.  I will credit this film as being the best executor of running gags since "Happy Gilmore."  But outside of these occasionally humorous situations, it was just a long stream of sexual jokes and dialogue that must be horribly offensive to any Middle Eastern person.  It is too soon for the majority of this humor and I now need to watch "Borat" a few times and pretend that this never happened.