The Dictator

[Charlie Chaplin as 'The Great Dictator']

[Sasha Baron Cohen great as 'The Dictator']

The Dictator is tasteless, crass, politically incorrect up the wazoo, and funny.  I feared that, as with so many movies, the trailers would be the best scenes and the rest of the movie would be a let down.  

In this movie, none of the trailers are even in the movie.  Which makes the trailers not excerpts but their own genre.  As so often with new genres, the foundation document is a masterpiece.  

Homer invents the epic with 'Iliad' which has never been surpassed among epics.  Chaucer invents English rhyming poetry with 'Canterbury Tales', which are still worth reading today.  The best bible, as something to read and enjoy, is still the Hebrew bible. 

Anyway, Cohen is clever in placing his fictional Wadiya on the map of north Africa, not in a made-up location but where Somalia is.  Which is itself witty.  The Somali government cannot complain of being made fun of because Somalia is the most failed of all failed states and has no government.  Indeed he is clever in a dozen ways and makes fun of lots of stuff, including the United States of course.

I recommend.  Which raises an interesting question.  There is the royal 'we' and the editorial 'we'.  Is a blog writer entitled to the latter?  Do I recommend or do we recommend?  Either way, it is an enjoyable hour and a half or whatever.

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