Ultimately, very disappointing. Though certain elements were obviously staged, part of the joy of Borat, and to a lesser extent, Bruno, was in seeing genuine reactions from real people. The Dictator suffers from being altogether more conventional, and unfortunately, more ordinary.

While some critics have noted that Sacha Baron-Cohen's characters are best enjoyed in short bursts, Borat still worked, as the road-movie format allowed what was essentially a series of vignettes to be linked by the traditional over-arching 'quest' narrative (ie. bagging Pamela Anderson). Furthermore, Borat was a likeable character; Baron-Cohen imbued the misunderstood fish-out-of-water with plenty of pathos. Though Aladeen eventually does the "right" thing, he is far less likable - more ignorant that naive - and his falling for Zoe is one of the more predictable elements of the seen-it-a-million-times-already plot.

With huge similarities to Trading Places and Coming to America, Baron-Cohen and co. must have spent a lot of the writing process watching Eddie Murphy movies. At least that we can be thankful, then, that they stuck to the early, funny ones, rather than the likes of Norbit, because The Dictator does, at least, boast some very funny, often bad taste gags.