The Not-So-Great Dictator

The Dictator

** out of ****

Directed by: Larry Charles

Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen, Jason Mantzoukas, Anna Faris, Ben Kingsley and John C. Reilly

Running time: 83 minutes

Sacha Baron Cohen is one of this generation’s most powerful comedy forces, whether it is lampooning sects of American culture through his popular sketch comedy creations Ali G, Borat and Brüno (which spawned three feature-length films) or as sterling comic relief in films like Hugo.

In his latest feature, The Dictator, Cohen attempts to bridge the realms of sketch comedy and narrative comedy, but with mixed results. He seems unwilling to abandon his roots as a sketch performer, but unfortunately, his penchant for quick laughs in episodic situations doesn’t fulfill the needs of a feature-length story.

When we first meet Cohen’s Admiral General Shabazz Aladeen (get it?), the feared tyrant of the fictional North African region of Wadiya, the comic stands tall and proud on the balcony of a gold-encrusted desert palace.

Aladeen gleefully announces to his people that he is close to enriching weapons-grade uranium. This draws staunch condemnation from the United Nations – or what Aladeen calls “the devil’s nest of America.” The dictator and his staff travel to New York to face the diplomacy.

Before getting to the UN, though, an undercover operative assigned by the dictator’s uncle, Tamir (Ben Kingsley), strips Aladeen of his beard. Tamir wants to turn Wadiya into a thriving democracy and unleash its oil reserves. He gets Aladeen’s oblivious double (also played by Baron Cohen) to pretend he is the ruler and get goodwill from the UN.

Without his beard, none of the protesters outside the UN recognizes the real Aladeen when he shows up. Instead, the crowd thinks he is a political dissident, including Zoey (Anna Faris), an exaggerated left-wing stereotype – she owns a vegan, organic, environmentally friendly bakery of sorts – that also becomes Aladeen’s inevitable love interest.

The Dictator features some comic landmines from earlier Baron Cohen films, from the sly ethnically altered music (R.E.M.’s powerful tear-jerker “Everybody Hurts” is hilariously dubbed in Wadiyan) to mixing in Hebrew with the foreign gibberish the protagonist uses (here, it doubles as fake Arabic).

However, the film is an awkward mix of sketch comedy scenes and a linear, coherent narrative. Some of the sketch comedy scenes are riotously funny, including a helicopter scene over Manhattan that flirts disastrously with 9/11 references.

Others feel dated, relying on broad slapstick and tired ideas, such as one scene where Aladeen tries to make up a fake name for himself at a restaurant by taking the phonetic sounds from signs hanging around.

As a result, the story progression feels forced and leaves some terrific actors at the butt of uninspired material. John C. Reilly’s coy hotel clerk, the unconvincing (and quite misogynist) romance with Anna Faris’s Zoey, and embarrassing cameos from Edward Norton and Garry Shandling are only a few examples of primary actors being wasted on inferior secondary characters.

I enjoyed many of the comedy set-ups in The Dictator – I never thought that I would laugh at the Munich Olympics murders and infanticide so freely – but at the end of the film, very little of the material worked for the benefit of the story.

The film is frenetically silly and often hilarious, but rarely convincing. The characters are such obvious stereotypes that it’s difficult to feel the cutting swipes Cohen and director Larry Charles are aiming for. It’s a hard movie to take seriously, which could have been a compliment if The Dictator didn’t attempt to be a topical political satire.

The Last King of Jamaica

Marley

***½  out of ****

Directed by: Kevin Macdonald

Running time: 144 minutes

Marley is a new documentary that chronicles the life of a shy Jamaican boy with an angelic voice whose anthems of love and freedom turned him into one of the world’s most revered musicians. It is a film fit for a legend and one of the finest and most comprehensive music profiles ever constructed.

This scrapbook of jovial interviews, electrifying live performances and insightful dissections of Marley’s career, unlike its subject, never drags.

He was born Robert Nesta Marley in Nine Mile in Jamaica, a decrepit village surrounded by exotic, hilly farmland. His community rejected him for his mixed ancestry – his father was an English Marine captain and colonial overseer, while his mother was of Jamaican descent.

When he was 12, Marley moved from one shantytown to another. He took up residence in Trench Town, a densely populated Kingston slum. Marley would play sweet melodies, pure and true, around the slum, gaining popularity.

He could not sell as a solo artist, however, and needed a group to widen his musical pursuits. Marley formed a ska group that went through many names before becoming the frontman for The Wailers, whose heavy vibrations of bebop made him a big radio star.

Many lively sources, dressed in colourful regalia, were interviewed for the film, including Wailers, managers and other musicians in the Jamaican music industry and Marley’s lovely wife, Rita.

These folks remind the audience that Marley, known as a compelling frontman, full of writhing intensity, was a shy and reserved young man. He had stage fright early on in his professional career. Nervous to perform onstage, Marley decided to practise at cemeteries in the thick of night.

Early photographs of the musician show him with crewcut hair. His iconic dreadlocks signify his eventual ties with the Rastafari movement, which preached independence and self-confidence, as well as ganja.

His spiritual revitalization turned him into a deeply focused musician and energetic performer, hungry for rhythm and harmony. Marijuana may have been his drug of choice, but music was what made him high.

Macdonald’s film uses its access with close family and friends to construct an enlightening, if not always positive, view of the reggae legend. His daughter pouts about his moody temperament and inability to relate to his own children in their formative years.

Meanwhile, others proudly recall Marley’s importance to Jamaican and African audiences, and his attempts to be a peace broker between opposing political groups in his home country.

Marley’s director, Kevin Macdonald, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2000 for One Day in September, a gripping record of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. The doc was unfortunately marred by the tasteless inclusion of rock music over photos of the victims’ bodies at the end.

12 years later, Macdonald makes up for this jarring audiovisual mismatch by bringing depth to the images of his latest venture through Marley’s music.

We see the squalor, the spiritualism and the political struggle that influenced Marley’s musical journey while hearing the songs that resulted from these moments in his life. The strong blend of sound and image makes the film an immersive and powerful one.

An Endearing Crowd-Pleaser with a Touchy Subtext

The Intouchables

*** out of ****

Directed by: Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano

Starring: François Cluzet, Omar Sy, Anne Le Ny, Audrey Fleurot and Clotilde Mollet

Running time: 112 minutes

When it comes to The Intouchables’ international box office take, this French feel-good crowd-pleaser lives up to its title. It spent 10 weeks at the top of the France box office, topped Germany’s charts for more than two months, and recently became the highest-grossing film in history not to be in the English language.

Now, The Intouchables touches down in North America in the heat of summer, and audiences that do not mind the overarching stereotypes will likely embrace it.

See, the film is about the relationship between Driss (Omar Sy), a smooth-talking black man from France’s crowded projects, and Philippe (François Cluzet), a wealthy white quadriplegic who lives in a pristine, gold-draped mansion in the heart of Paris.

Driss tries to get welfare benefits when he shows up for the interview at Philippe’s mansion, not attracted by social work and home care.

Nevertheless, Philippe hires Driss, hoping that the crude-speaking and riotously lively man will not give him pity and compassion as he lies around in a wheelchair, a victim of a paragliding accident. 

He sees in Driss a competitor, and more importantly, a friend. The two crack jokes, occasionally get high and become inseparable.

The duo’s blossoming camaraderie is based on a true-life relationship; although the film’s finest qualities –brilliant performances and sharp direction, among them – are undermined, by what filmmaker Spike Lee termed a “’Magic Negro’ figure.”

This character is one of African descent whose role is to be subservient to a white character and help him or her fulfill their purpose or destiny.

Driss, for instance, is less defined as an individual than he is as Philippe’s helper and friend. Throughout the film, he helps Philippe rediscover the joy of Paris by taking him on impromptu journeys through the city and beyond. He also helps him commit to a woman that Philippe is having an epistolary relationship with.

On the contrary, writer/directors Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano bring less focus to Driss’s relationships with people from his family. These minor characters mainly function to keep Driss at a vulnerable distance from the protagonist.

However, besides this worrisome subtext, whereby more credence is given to the rich, white character than his ex-con companion, The Intouchables is a terrifically likable piece of feel-goodery due to the two magnetic lead performances.

Sy is a pompous treat as Driss, bringing forth with equal conviction the character’s sly, animated tomfoolery with moments of genuine emotional anguish. It is a superb balancing act.

As his friend (and occasional foe), Cluzet has a deadpan wit but anguished soul. He keeps toe-to-toe with Sy’s antics despite being confined to a chair, unable to move any part below his neck.

Even when problematic stereotypes invade the story world, The Intouchables rarely stops being incessantly charming, a top-notch buddy flick that is crisply filmed, tenderly acted, and quite often hilarious.

Smashing Entertainment, But More Character Assembly Required

The Avengers

*** out of ****

Directed by: Joss Whedon

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Hemsworth, Jeremy Renner and Chris Evans

Running time: 142 minutes

The Avengers is a solid, old-fashioned piece of populist summer escapism, but not the rousing comic book extravaganza one would hope for.

Fan expectations were high, since the film’s journey to the big screen took five precursor films – two Iron Man installments, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger – and is the first film from fanboy favourite Joss Whedon since 2005’s Serenity.

The superhero team-up is not quite a smash (pun definitely intended), although it is one of the better films to emerge from the consistently average bunch of Marvel comic book adaptations.

Despite their aesthetics, comic books thrive as a medium when they externalize the interior plight or conflict within the protagonist and other significant characters.

Many comic book film adaptations simplify this internal struggle down to the bare necessities, in order to leave room for a story, the introduction of the story world and the frenetic action sequences that show off the hero’s superhuman abilities.

The best comic book and graphic novel adaptations of the last ten years – The Dark Knight, Sin City, A History of Violence – explored the damaged psyche of its characters, who were more anti-heroes than sweeping saviours. They emphasized interior action over exterior action sequences.

So, regardless of the terrific work offered by Whedon and his foolproof ensemble cast, The Avengers is unfortunately marred by a dearth of insightful character moments.

The film’s MacGuffin is an energy source called the Tesseract, which harnesses energy from space. At the opening, it opens up a portal that allows Loki (from Thor, played by Tom Hiddleston) entrance into covert espionage network S.H.I.E.L.D., led by Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) and director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), where scientists are experimenting with the new technology.

Loki extracts the Tesseract’s power, places it in his sceptre and uses it to gain control over others as he plans for galactic domination. The only response S.H.I.E.L.D. can muster is the one that five films have led up to: the “Avengers Initiative.”

The assembled team consists of smart-alec weapons specialist Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), tortured scientist Bruce Banner/The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), classy Russian spy Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), endearing patriot hero Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) straight shooter Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and the burly God of Thunder, Thor (Chris Hemsworth).

The simple plot builds its conflict through the budding heads of our hot-tempered superheroes. Rogers’ old-fashioned idealism does not cut through Stark’s snippy ego, for instance, while the playboy billionaire also tries to tick off Banner (who you won’t like when he’s angry).

The playful banter and growing camaraderie from the characters ensure that The Avengers’ middle third is its best, smartly playing the dynamics of these pre-established parts off each other to form a stronger whole.

Less overall time is given to the backstories of Barton and Romanoff, who are the least identifiable players on this team.

Further, Ruffalo’s portrayal of Banner is a bit too casual for the usually off-kilter character, although he’s solid enough to make one forget Edward Norton and Eric Bana (both were good but in inferior Hulk variations). The special effects work going into The Hulk, meanwhile, is finally worthy of the word “incredible.”

Although writer/director Joss Whedon is best known for deconstructing genres like horror and science-fiction, he plays the story straight here. It’s an old-fashioned and wholesome action-adventure, just as Steve Rogers would like it: the story is light, the characters are larger than life and the action is filmed thrillingly.

The cast is uniformly excellent, even if their compressed individual screen time doesn’t give them as many outlets to demonstrate their acting range. While The Avengers is great entertainment, it is not an entirely resonant or emotionally cathartic film.

No Way Out in Norway

Headhunters

***½  out of **** 

Directed by: Morten Tyldum

Starring: Aksel Hennie, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Synnøve Macody Lund, Julie Ølgaard and Eivind Sander

Running time: 100 minutes

As the boastful but insecure protagonist Roger Brown (played by Aksel Hennie) tells the audience, he stands meager at just 1.68 metres tall. To compensate for his lack of, well, size, Brown has a beautiful blonde wife, a lavish country home and a prosperous career as one of Oslo’s finest headhunters.

Roger Brown is a dazzler. He tells a client near the film’s start that an artist’s entire worth depends on their reputation. But to keep up with the expenses that his lifestyle and position commands, he is also an art connoisseur and thief.

He inquires into the clients that depend on him for job recruitment advice, finds out when they are not home, and skillfully manages to get away with replacing the original works hanging in their places with a duplicate copy.

The scheming and stealing are to help offer his wife, Diana (Synnøve Macody Lund), a plush lifestyle, and one that allows her to open an art gallery of her own work. However, Diana would trade all of these opportunities to have Roger’s child.

But Brown finds an elusive secret when stealing a genuine Rubens portrait from the apartment of a crafty tech businessman, Clas Greve (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, best known to North American audiences as Jaime Lannister on HBO’s Game of Thrones).

The confusion and paranoia soon escalates into a breakneck game of cat-and-mouse, although one that is constantly surprising and compellingly acted.

Headhunters is a twisted comedy-thriller, based on a 2008 novel by Norwegian author Jo Nesbø. Nesbø’s troubled anti-heroes and swift plotting make him easy fodder for big screen adaptations (Martin Scorsese announced recently that he will direct an adaptation of Nesbø’s The Snowman).

With steely eyes and an expressive, angular face that resembles a young Christopher Walken, Hennie manages to grab the audience’s sympathy.

Hennie’s performance is smooth and refined, situating himself within the luxury of the protagonist. But as the plot thickens to submit his character to relentless and horrifying obstacles – many with bloody and gruesome aftermaths – we grow attached to him as he goes through dire circumstances.

Very few films bring us so close to the main character that we are content with watching his face twist and eyes dart around as he figures out what is happening around him.

Director Morten Tyldum keeps the plotting as tight and focused as tiptop Ludlum. He uses deft visual and auditory clues to create suspense and makes effective use of a strikingly intense musical score.

Tyldum also manages to balance two wildly varying tones and use them in tandem without becoming plodding or jarring. Between the increasingly tense cat-and-mouse antics, the film gets its moments of ridiculous, unexpected slapstick.

Swiftly paced, strongly acted and stylishly composed, Headhunters is a terrific Norwegian noir that is also about to get the Hollywood remake treatment. One doubts that the steady and successful balance of life-threatening violence with light humour will make such an easy transition between the continents.

Whit Stillman, with Love and Squalor

Damsels in Distress

*** out of ****

Directed by: Whit Stillman

Starring: Greta Gerwig, Analeigh Tipton, Adam Brody, Carrie MacLemore and Ryan Metcalf

Running time: 99 minutes

Watching a Whit Stillman film is like observing an “in crowd” of friends frolicking without abandon at retro fads and engaging in hyper-intelligent conversation. This cool, preppy, sharply observant crowd is one you may be eager to join, although you will always be standing at the periphery, a little aloof at how the group flows from one engagement to another.

Stillman is a revered writer/director in the canon of 1990s independent film. Damsels in Distress, a refreshing and peculiar dark comedy set at a preppy university, is his first film in 14 years.

The film centers around four girlfriends, our titular damsels, as they navigate the trials of relationships, both with each other (as friends) and with the opposite sex (who are their distress).

The damsels – all with floral-centric names – are erudite leader Violet (Greta Gerwig), free-spirited Heather (Carrie MacLemore), sassy-spoken Rose (Megalyn Echikunwoke) and blossoming freshman Lily (Analeigh Tipton). Lily acts as an audience surrogate, peering into the unfamiliar styles of this clique.

Violet, Heather and Rose work with a youth outreach program at the Seven Oaks University to help students that may attempt suicide.

The social triad also spends their free time analyzing the philosophy of social life on campus. It is the girls’ mission to rid Seven Oaks of its “male barbarism.” Thankfully, their self-righteous pedantry becomes less overbearing as the film moves along.

The most fascinating character is Violet, a damaged soul who tries to give herself therapy by administering her personal woes to others going through a similar sorrow.

Written like the remarkably vain child of literary characters from Muriel Spark and J.D. Salinger, she speaks with an elitist vocabulary and stance over the rest of the student body. When Lily points out that Violet is a hypocrite, Violet doesn’t reprimand her friend but analyzes the truth behind the comment, like an inquisitive university professor.

Throughout the film, she receives her own confrontation with death, and this massages the character’s pricklier edges. Gerwig is perfectly cast as the off-kilter leader, witty and egregious (although she does come to charm as her character brightens up).

Beyond the sourness of the film's suicide elements, the film mainly chronicles the ebbs and flows of the romances between the damsels and their distress, the men in their lives. 


Among them are: Charlie, a smooth operator with many secrets (Adam Brody), a dim-witted frat boy named Frank (Ryan Metcalf) and his close friend, Thor (Billy Magnussen), an aloof jock who doesn’t know what the colours are. Frank is Violet’s correspondence, and the magnetism from their opposite personalities works to sharp comic effect.

Although these students’ adventures are episodic and some characters slighted into fewer scenes, the body is a delightful and endearing circle of friends. Their quirks and blemishes are fascinating, but their spirit is delightful, leading to a buoyant song-and-dance number toward the film's end.

These scenes, shot with effervescent Technicolor, display the sunnier progression these characters have made throughout the semester. (Hint: it comes from the scent in the soap.)

Damsels in Distress may be a school-set comedy that's too cool for school. But when that cool comes from the clever and ultra-stylized (although sometimes maddening) rhythms and rhymes of Whit Stillman, you're in for a peculiar and original treat - even if you're still trying to understand how his characters move, think and speak.

Three Strikes, Stoller's Out

The Five-Year Engagement

*½ out of ****

Directed by: Nicholas Stoller

Starring: Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Rhys Ifans, Alison Brie and Chris Pratt

Running time: 124 minutes

The Five-Year Engagement is an interminable 124 minutes of mediocre jokes, clunky comedic timing and contrived story development. Poorly paced and insufferably bland, it feels like an actual five-year engagement by the time the credits flash.

Engagement is writer/director Nicholas Stoller’s third R-rated comedy, after Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek. It is also his third comedy misfire, and his lack of development as a writer-director is dumbfounding.

Stoller aims to illuminate a modern conflict concerning the collision course of married life and the career world. However, he does not maneuver through this dilemma very successfully.

The loving couple at the film’s center is Tom Solomon (Jason Segal) and Violet Barnes (Emily Blunt), both of whom can be described as sweet, kind and nice. Tom is a sous-chef at a fancy San Francisco restaurant, while Violet is a psychology PhD waiting for acceptance into a post-doctorate program.

Tom pops the question to Violet in the first scene, and from there, the film careens into a one-joke premise. When will these two lovable loons walk down the aisle? Pushing off nuptials isn’t much of a concept for a comedy, which is likely why the funny moments are rare.

The pacing freezes early on, when Violet is admitted to the University of Michigan and decides to move to the Great Lakes region with Tom. However, that means Tom must leave a job that gave him a remarkable salary and a stable future.

Segal, attuned to the woes of his character, signals to the audience that he is miserable for making this sacrifice. As his character suffers the doldrums, career-wise and relationship-wise, the audience can only await the inevitable confrontation.

However, instead of tightening the story by pushing the conflict forward to a breaking point, Stoller crowds the film with filler scenes that focus on the film’s supporting characters – played by a variety of ace comedy players from Kevin Hart to Mindy Kaling.

These moments do not advance the story or develop the lead characters, but revolve around jokes. The momentum stops. By the time big turning points finally arrive on screen, it is hard to feign much interest in the dilemmas and plights of the characters.

It doesn’t help that Tom and Violet are an impeccable duo, without many flaws except for their strangely irrational decision to keep pushing off their nuptials. Segal and Blunt play off each other terrifically, but their characters are too perfect.

The other problem with the characterization is that when the characters go through the old romantic comedy convention of distancing themselves from each other (which will enforce an eventual split), their motivations are false. Their characters behave in unexpected ways that don’t make sense based on what the audience already knows about the characters. That’s a grievous screenwriting sin.

To write and direct a comedy that feels inextricably modern, capably paced and funny, one cannot only rely on a stealthy ensemble. There must be conflict and tension within the characters that helps the story evolve organically and build momentum.

Nicholas Stoller has not mastered these elements. Until he learns how to pace action, plot conflict and build character, any engagement with his work should be delayed.