Second best line: “You promised me that Hugo would be under two hours.”

The Dictator “is frequently funny and fast-moving and inventive,” I wrote from Las Vegas on 4.24. “And it’s not just another Borat-Bruno here-we-go-again yaddah yaddah, which I had feared it might be.

“Okay, don’t trust me (I don’t care) but it was clear to yours truly and presumably others last night that (a) The Dictator is much, much better than Bruno, (b) it’s not a victim-punking mockumentary but a ludicrously farcical movie-movie with an arc and character development and a payoff — a personal journey of awakening (‘like Eat Pray Love,’ as Sacha Baron Cohen‘s General Admiral Aladeen quips during the last third) that is mostly ridiculous but isn’t dismissable, partly because (c) it has actual political content and a great political third-act speech that for some reason reminded me of a payoff moment in a Preston Sturges film (like Hail the Conquering Hero, perhaps).”