The Dictator

Larry Charles’s 2012 film sends Aladeen, ruler of the invented country of Wadiya, to New York, where a lookalike takes his place and leaves him with no name. At 83 minutes the theatrical cut is a run of set pieces, not a plot; the swap mainly moves Aladeen from palace to street, where nobody obeys him. The satire states its argument plainly only once, in the closing speech, so a viewer who quits on the gags early never hears the film say what it thinks. The Wadiyan palace is Seville’s Plaza de España and the desert weapons site was built on Fuerteventura. With the United Nations refusing to allow filming inside, the General Assembly was rebuilt at Grumman Studios in Bethpage. An opening card dedicates the film to the memory of Kim Jong Il. Sacha Baron Cohen worked fully to a script, so unlike Borat and Brüno nobody on camera is deceived. The promotion kept the old method: he arrived on the 2012 Oscars carpet in character and emptied an urn of ashes over a host. A longer unrated cut also exists. Kazakhstan banned it two weeks in. A good fit if you accept the political case arrives at once in a final speech. Not for anyone waiting for real bystanders to react, since everyone facing Aladeen is an actor.