Trailer Park: "The Dictator" Trades In Smart Satire For Broad Humor

It's time to see if Sacha Baron Cohen can be funny outside of Borat and Bruno.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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With the Borat craze all but dead, and with most people forgetting Bruno ever existed, Sacha Baron Cohen is ready to make his return to the big screen in an original comedy titled The Dictator. In the movie, Cohen plays an eccentric Muammar Gaddafi-esque ruler of a fictional country in the Middle-East where he is adored by his people and has enough rubies to afford a night in bed with Megan Fox. It's a pretty sweet gig.

Even though this movie has all the makings of a smart satire, once Cohen utters the line, "America, the birthplace of AIDS," while riding an elephant down the streets of Manhattan, it becomes evident that this will be more of an over-the-top farce than anything else. Fortunately, Cohen is joined by the talents of John C. Reilly and Ben Kingsley, who are all talented enough to prevent this from turning into another You Don't Mess with the Zohan.

When this movie was first announced, there was a feeling that it would have the same kind of social relevance of Charlie Chaplin's 1940 Hitler spoof, The Great Dictator. And while that unfortunately doesn't seem like the case anymore, The Dictator does look more than capable of providing the laughs that this country so desperately needs at the moment. Plus, watching Cohen gun down rivals with a starting-pistol during and Olympic style race is well worth the price of admission.

The Dictator will hit theaters on May 11, 2012. 

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