The American Satire comedy follows a unexpected twist that brings a teenager into friendship with a foreign dictator. In the turn out of event but will have to learn a thing from each other.
Distinguished only by the fact that co-writer-directors Lisa Addario and Joe Syracuse convinced the great Michael Caine to costar in this thudding mishmash.
There's something sharper and smarter in Dear Dictator, but that ground is left regrettably unexplored; it's a film that ultimately doesn't live up to its premise. Going deeper would require considerably more guts.
Something about Dear Dictator really rubbed me the wrong way. As comedy, it is utterly devoid of laughs. As social commentary, it is audacious only in how utterly condescending it ultimately proves to be.
The only people to blame here are Addario & Syracuse, who block and shoot every scene with an energy that makes each week's installment of The Big Bang Theory seem downright avant-garde by comparison.
Too leaden for farce and too bland for satire, Lisa Addario and Joe Syracuse's "Dear Dictator" wastes a potential gold mine of culture-clashing silliness on worn, high school movie clichés.
Although the filmmakers name-check and appear to draw inspiration from Mean Girls, they've missed the mark on truly biting satire, leaving Dear Dictator toothless and silly.