I wanted to like this movie more than I did, but while it has some great moments (e.g. the dictator's wall of conquests, the sports competition) it never seemed to work for me. There was an aura of "trying too hard" about it, gags striving but never quite making it, and some of them being too old and obvious e.g. gags about feminist women with hairy underarms running an organic co-op, doing a turd from high up on a wire. Maybe I couldn't get past the fact that the Dictator, who they try to make sympathetic (he's lonely, the people he sent off to be executed just emigrate to the US, he falls for Anna Faris), is still, even at the end of the movie, a sexist, anti-Semitic, anti-Democractic murderer whose regime is full of torture. His country would have been better off having democratic reforms and selling all the oil to China. That's right - in this movie the antagonists are pro-democracy.
The support cast is excellent, particularly Jason Mantzoukas as the Dictator's ally, and Sasha Baron Cohen throws his heart and soul into it, but for me it just doesn't get there.
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