Sacha Baron Cohen's new production "The Dictator" was expected to be a bust, it was expected to be Sacha going even more over the top than what he has done before, and oh were we mistaken. If you followed Sacha's career you know that his beginnings weren't exactly shocking (as far as material goes) but that the more he released movies the older his characters became and thus the more he felt that he needed to "shock" people into liking him, which led to him putting himself in dangerous situations offending powerful people at times. For the most part we enjoyed these antics ("Bruno" aside of course), but this new addition to his collection came as a surprise to many in that we were expecting something even more absurd than "Bruno" but instead he gave us something fresh and enjoyable.
Keep in mind that this is a Sacha Baron movie so there are very strong scenes within this movie, but they are more in the "Monty Python" spirit and not the gross stunts he was attempting to sell to us earlier. The story is making a good social critique about our interactions with the middle east and plays on various silly jokes. There is a possibility that we are being bias here because we thought this movie was going to be wretched but this movie was pretty funny, as funny as you would want a Sacha film to be, it is worse than "Borat" but better than "Bruno", it has gross mature content but for the most part it's not done in a horrible manner, so though we are cautious in recommending anything by Sacha we say if you like his work then go watch it, if you don't don't go, it's as easy as that. In the end this movie is a 3/5 in its genre, it is surprisingly not as offensive as we thought it would be but also at the same time it is not as good as it could be content wise. We cringe as we say this but we hope Sacha makes another one and an "evolution" is seen following the steps of this production.
With all this being said here is the negative things about this movie, Sacha is offensive to everyone, we mean everyone, he is not "as" offensive as his previous productions but still offensive, no one escapes being offended or made fun off. Some things he talks about are witty and humorous but many are under the belt shots that are sure to offend anyone that has a hard time being picked on, so he doesn't quite reach the "Monty Python" level of comedy yet, but he is on his way to producing something more along those lines, soon we hope. So if shows like "South Park" or "Family Guy" offend you then know that this movie will be incredibly offensive to you, this is not a movie for everyone just like those shows are not for everyone. One thing is a fact though, Sacha has stepped up his game a bit with this movie and this might be the beginning of something new in his career, for that we are thankful and look forward to what he will try to bring to us next.
One would have imagined that we would have spent three paragraphs on "Battleship" instead of "The Dictator" but color us disappointed when it comes to "Battleship". Going in we knew this movie was going to attempt to be the brashest movie of the summer, much like "Cowboys and Aliens" was last year, but take it from us this movie didn't even come close to being comparable to "C&A". "Battleship" has a lot of guns, some explosions (nothing like Michael Bay delivers but still nice), no character development, almost no plot, tons of sub plots which almost all don't come together or matter in the end, and you never find out much about these aliens, just that humanity is awesome and we would win a war even if it was against an advanced civilization.
While watching this movie you got a feeling that they wanted to please everyone with what they were putting on screen, they didn't even have time to give us one concrete character due to this approach, it is always dangerous to put 20-30 subplots in a shotgun and hope for the best when constructing a movie. The movie would have been awesome if they had let go of all the multiple story lines and just focused on one or two of them allowing us time to fall in love with a character, maybe even adding more depth to the alien attack would have been nice as well, a few lines here and there can go a long way. This isn't a "theater movie" this is a "Oh, 'Battleship' is on HBO, let's give it a watch" movie, we give it a 2/5, even with explosions. You know a movie is bad when we would rather watch "The Dictator" again in order to wash the horribleness out after you finish watching it. Might sound harsh, but this movie is deserving of the harshness.
We hope you find yourself having an amazing weekend, for those graduating this weekend we tip our hats to you, Congrats! Have a fantastic weekend and be safe over this summer.
Love from your humble blogger,
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