THE DICTATOR REVIVES POLITICAL FILMS
Presidential election years usually are crammed with political films. Not 2012. Since our latest review (on March 1), nervous cinema barons have pandered to spring fever films—those focusing on relationships, trying to capitalize on young people seeking date nights in dark theaters, before the deluge of summer kiddie films. Now along comes a dictator (played by Sasha Baron Cohen) whose zany behavior satirizes recent world politics. Directed by Larry Charles, The Dictator is a composite of nearly every dictator of the Arabic-speaking world but also points out that in a dictatorship one would expect the top 1 percent to have most of the wealth, thus critiquing America’s plutocratic status quo as no other film has dared. For amusement, social criticism, but not its rampant ribaldry, The Dictator harkens back to a much tamer but more foreboding classic—Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940). MH