Larry Charles is a very talented writer, good director, funny guy and enormous beard wearer. Those are some special attributes that have served him well as he made the transition from stand-up comic to TV comedy scripter to successful Hollywood auteur.
Well, yesterday the L.A. Times reported that Charles was primed to team up with Sacha Baron Cohen for a 3rd time with The Dictator. The film would follow two characters both played by Cohen, a deposed foreign dictator and a goat herder, as they somehow become lost in the US and likely make fun of the locals. It’s been called a cross between Coming to America and Trading Places.
This will be Cohen’s first solo project that doesn’t feature one of his Ali G characters, and to help him craft the script he’s wrangled Curb Your Enthusiasm writers David Mandel, Alec Berg and Jeff Schaffer. And now that Charles is looking like he wants in on this project things could get moving pretty quickly.
I loved Borat and there’s plenty to like in Bruno as well, but I’d like to see Cohen try something a little different this time around. It sounds all too familiar to me, but if Charles does agree to direct then one more outing from them wouldn’t be a bad thing.