Sunday, May 20, 2012

Don't (re) see ‘The Dictator’ till you read this.


Twenty odd years ago when I was timorous teenage boy in the backwards of Sydney Australia, I formed a crush on cute red head soap opera star named Isla Fisher.

A few years later the internet was invented and I, while doing research into why I constantly needed to apply medicated creams to my body, discovered an interview Isla had granted some lucky journalist, where she spoke of losing her virginity at a mere sixteen years old, saying:

'I was going to break up with my boyfriend but I realized I hadn't had sex yet, so I slept with him and then dumped him.'

My infatuation with her was lost that day - like a favorite Band-Aid that I forgot to glue on before going for a swim. For you see I was no longer convinced it would be me who took her virginity and seeing as at the time I was positive I would share my virginity only with someone sharing hers with me, I sadly, was forced to form unrealistic crushes on other teenage celebrities that I wrongly thought may still be virgins.

However, I was but only one of the boy affected by her story. That boy who was given her amazing orange haired rose was also affected, and he became extremely paranoid about his sexual performance after that day:  

'She gave me her virginity, the most wonderful gift a girl can give a boy, so obviously she loved me, so how bad must I have been to be dumped right after?' he began mumbling on trains, and in math class at school.

One boy who was not affected by her story was a man named Sasha Baron Cohen. Having never been a teenage boy in Australia he never formed a crush on her only to have his dream of sharing his virginity with her destroyed by one bad interview and the invention of the Internet, and one day he met the gorgeous Isla at the annual ‘we are not American but one day will be famous in America party’ that Elton John throws every year in London and he was immediately infatuated with her.

‘I will do anything to share my virginity with her' he declared, and he set off on a worldwide journey to discover what she liked. Worldwide being the distance the boat then took as the only way to get to Australia where Isla was from. ‘Worldwide cruises’ was the name of the cruise line, and they also stopped occasionally in Tahiti.


Sasha, having spent three fruitless years in Tahiti finding out practically nothing about Isla (other than her preference for Pinna Coladas over being thrown in active volcano’s), continued his journey to Australia. Upon de-shipping he made several puns about the irony of him exploring Islands to find out about Isla, and discovering many Australian’s responded with ‘I don’t get it’ he decided on a new plan, to track down Islas exes to see if he was anything like them.

After much research, and one notable attempt for laughs in an Internet café by yelling ‘research, more like reSURF’ he finally tracked down one of Isla’s exes, now residing in a mental institution, having descended from mumbling about Isla into a multiple personality schizophrenic. Sasha declared that day that he would become as much like this man as possible in hope that by doing so he could win Isla’s hand.

He did mountains of LSD and smoked all the marijuana he could get his hands on, and sure enough various personalities began springing forth, and he did win Islas hand in marriage.

What he didn't expect though, was that documentary filmmakers would begin following him around and releasing documentaries on his various personalities, the best of which were called Borat and Bruno.

Things were going great for Sasha; he was now a movie star and married to a beautiful Australian red headed soap opera star, who now bore him two children. Then one day, while looking up pictures of his wife on the Internet, he ran into one of the earliest pages of the Internet, where an old interview Isla had done was still stored, it’s pages yellow with age.

'I though we were going to share our virginities!' he screamed at her as he read it.
'We have two children together' she replied 'so probably not, just let it go, I don’t want you to end up with multiple-personalities like my old boyfriend'

But Sasha couldn't let it go ‘don’t tell me not to form multiple personalities’ he yelled at her ‘and besides I thought that was why you fell in love with me!’

His mind didn’t know how to deal with this betrayal, and a new personality did grow out of him - a Muslim dictator in fact, sure to be rewarded with seventy-two virgin Australian red head soap stars in heaven'

The documentarians were ecstatic of course, and they stood gleefully by filming as he shot people, had sex with famous women, cried about having no one to cuddle with, even though later on we’d find out he had a plethora of options for cuddle companions, and even injured small boys.

The resulting documentary ‘The Dictator’ is at times hilarious, at times not so much, and leaves the audience pondering life’s big questions. Such as:

-       Were all men in mental institutions dumped immediately after taking Isla Fisher’s virginity?
-       If a cute Australian red head soap star offered her virginity to me would it be worth it for the schizophrenia? And
-       Would I ever even want to be a huge movie star if I never got to share my virginity with Isla Fisher?

If you answer:
-       Only 29%
-       Yes and
-       No

Then you will love this film.