DEAR DICTATOR
US, 2018, 90 minutes, Colour.
Michael Caine, Odeya Rush, Katie Holmes, Seth Green, Jason Biggs.
Directed by Lisa and Dario, Joe Syracuse.
In many ways this is a rather oddball comedy.
It would be interesting to hear Michael Caine on why he chose to do this role. Looking like a latter-day Fidel Castro, he is president as a longtime dictator of a Caribbean country. With his beard and Castro -like uniform, he is a parody of the dictator, stringing up opposition, full of platitudes about patriotism, rebels, the good of the country – while the country itself is collapsing economically and the locals are visibly hostile. Perhaps it should be said that Michael Caine is not particularly convincing as this kind of dictator – while he has the nasty words and buildings in Porcher, he looks rather like and affable old granduncle.
Meanwhile in the United States, rebellious teenager Tatiana (Odeya Rush) lives with her mother who gave birth to her while she was a teenager (Katie Holmes). There is a genial teacher (Jason Biggs – and memories of his juvenile parts, especially American Pie 20 years earlier). He urges the students to write a letter to somebody significant and Tatiana rights to the dictator. They have a warm kind of correspondence, he sending her an armband, she thinking he was rather benevolent. In the meantime, she has difficulties with her mother, certainly towards her mother who is in a flirtatious relationship with a married dentist (Seth Green) for whom she is an assistant. There is also the problem of a group of Mean Girls who persecute her as well as a nice fellow-student who is dominated by his very religious father and has a sense of sinfulness, especially in sexual matters.
And so, this is the setting for the dictator fleeing his country, knowing no one in the United States (a place and culture he despises with continuous disparaging remarks) goes to hide with Tatiana and her mother. It turns out that is very good at practical fixing of appliances. He shaves his beard and becomes even more like Michael Caine!
There are various ups and downs in his hiding, his making a video for his loyal troops in the jungle and it going to CNN and on the news. He is fitted out with clothes, urges Tatiana to become more rebellious and become tyrannical at school – which she does. In the meantime, the dictator also is a very good cook, which mother isn’t, and in some ways he becomes indispensable in the house with mother falling in love with him.
There are a whole lot of shenanigans, Tatiana believing too strongly in the dictator and then becoming disillusioned, her putting him into the police and is going to prison (which he says proves that she has really become a true rebel).
Michael Caine fans will probably be scratching their heads. Odeya Rush is vivacious as Tatiana and Katie Holmes still seems young as her mother.
It might have been more successful if presented as less “realistic� and with lighter touches of fantasy.
