The (Real) Dictator

Sacha Baron Cohen turned up in character as General Aladeen on Oscars night, after all, and dumped an urn of ashes of his friend a fellow dictator all over Ryan Seacrest.

This was my part of my column in The Malta Independent on Sunday, last Sunday.

The last film at which I laughed myself silly was Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno.

So I’m more than glad to see that he has another epic character in production: The Dictator.

This should be one film that Franco Debono, Jesmond Mugliett and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando – all three with an epic lack of sense of humour and a serious dictator complex – should see on a boys’ night out.

The character is based on Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, and if Ali G, Borat and Bruno are anything to go on, it’s going to be hyper-realistic, though how Baron Cohen is going to work up the laughs at comedic behaviour which is rooted in absolute terror is beyond me to understand.

Or perhaps it shouldn’t be. Adolf Hitler, a despot far more terrible and destructive than those other two, has long been a figure of fun, lending himself magnificently to mockery and spoofs.

Sacha Baron Cohen had planned to debut this latest character on the red carpet at Oscars night, but the managing director of Academy membership apparently rang Paramount to say that he would not be made at all welcome if he turned up in character as The Dictator.

“Unless they’re assured that nothing entertaining is going to happen on the red carpet, The Academy is not admitting Sacha Baron Cohen,” a spokesman for Paramount said. The Academy responded to the allegations by saying that it had given Baron Cohen a polite reminder that the dress code for Oscars night is black tie.