Sascha Baron Cohen is really good at being a douche bag. I know “the more intellectual” will try to find some sort of depth or insight in the parodies and characters he puts out there. The cool part is that I typically agree with him for screwing with close minded and dumb people. His stuff as Borat and Bruno pushed the buttons of a lot of horrible and too-simple-for-anyone’s-good types of folk. It’s just that he’s going for easy targets and it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s like “is that redneck gentleman going to hate the flamboyant foreign gay guy?” Yes… He WILL. Duh. That doesn’t make it right, but it doesn’t exactly make it entertaining as well. I’m all for exposing bigotry for its ignorance and all of that fun stuff, but a lot of the time the character is so grating that’s exhausting in an unfunny way. I loved his old HBO series. Smaller doses was perfect. Apparently this new character, “The Dictator” gets a non-mockumentary and some actual scripting. Cohen tried this with the Ali G character. It didn’t turn out that great, but I think he’s got enough momentum now in both success and creativeness to make it work. Cohen is a damn good performer. The performance isn’t and should never be in question. The content and narrative is what could make or break it. The supporting cast has Anna Faris, Kevin Corrigan, JB Smoove, Bobby Lee, Ben Kingsley, BJ Novak, John C Reilly, and others. I’m sure that collection of awesomeness will help. Cohen is awesome and so was Andy Kaufman. I’d like to see Cohen continue to do scripted movies for awhile or else I’m going to have to start pointing out the glaring similarities.
