Sacha Baron Cohen is back, and after skewering white-boy hip-hop poseurs (Ali G), unwittingly offensive "foreigners" (Borat) and ridiculously camp gay fashionistas (Bruno), his newest target is a timely one: pompous, pampered, preening Middle Eastern tyrants.
If anything, his new film "The Dictator" is too timely: The scriptwriters had to change an Osama Bin Laden subplot when the Navy SEALs bagged him, and Moammar Gadhafi — on whom Baron Cohen's eccentric despot is closely modeled — was shot by his own people before the film opened.
"The Dictator" marks a new direction for Baron Cohen; up until now, his comic edge lay in taking his fictional characters and throwing them into real-life situations with people who weren't in on the joke, whether it was Bruno coming on to congressman Ron Paul in a hotel room, or the inarticulate Ali G interviewing Noam Chomsky on linguistics.
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