Dear Dictator

OK, so there were no superheroes, just Michael Caine as a cranky old dictator and Katie Holmes as a stressed-out mom. It was a bit understated at times, but moved along at a nice, even pace and had some nice acting. The script seems to have been well thought out and there were plenty of (mostly) subtle laughs to be enjoyed. I definitely feel as though my time was well spent watching it.

If you're looking for car chases and explosions, you'll need to look elsewhere, but it's good for its genre.

I enjoyed it.

Surprisingly, I enjoyed it a lot - even though the premise didn't excite me at first. But, I love mother-daughter movies, especially when the daughter is a snotty but vulnerable teenager. The cast is great, especially the two females leads. Clever and cute - but not too cute. Reminded me of Mrs. Doubtfire - without the drag impersonations.

Tatiana Mills (Odeya Rush) is an American suburban teen. Her single mom Darlene (Katie Holmes) is having an affair with her married dentist boss Dr Charles Seaver (Seth Green) with a foot fetish. The whale-tailed mean girls at school call themselves the Slushies. She has a crush on her Christian friend Denny. Her social studies teacher Mr Spines (Jason Biggs) give the class an assignment to write to a pen pal. She picks ruthless Latin American dictator Anton Vincent (Michael Caine). When American backed rebels overtake his country, he finds his way into Tatiana's garage.

It's a wacky Mean Girls take with a bloody dictator. I'm a little leery of Caine as a Latin American dictator. Rush is a pretty good standard grumpy teen. There are a lot of wackiness but it rarely results in laughs. There are some moments of surprise laughs, mostly with Rush and Caine together. I really like that combo. I do wish for taking on more risk and pushing more comedy into the movie. It does help that I like both Rush and Caine.

Michael Caine plays Anton Vincent, a dictator of a unnamed country, who is overthrown in a coup d'etat, escapes to America and secretly takes refuge in the home of his teenage pen-pal Tatiana (Odeya Rush) and her mother Darlene (Katie Holmes).

I came across this film by accident, was intrigued by its synopsis, so I decided to give it a try and was pleasantly surprised.

The film is not a blockbuster, it is low budget, and low on action, but it is well paced and enjoyable with good performances by its main stars. This is one to watch when you want a gentle film to fill an hour and a half of your time.

Not for everyone maybe, especially action lovers, but well worth a watch.

Boy, the other reviews here are scathing, but as far as I'm concerned, this film ain't so bad.

From the opening credits I could see that this movie was extremely low budget and so I set my expectations equally low. In the end I was surprised on two counts: firstly, the film wasn't that bad; and secondly, that 4 of the other 5 reviewers here on IMDB rated it so badly.

The story is ridiculous. A dictator gets overthrown and flees to the US where he knows he can hide with a young girl who has chosen him to be her pen-pal and who he believes will protect him. Choosing Michael Caine for the role is equally ridiculous, as is the rest of the film's story line. But that's what I think the other reviewers here have missed: the whole story is so ridiculous that you cannot take any of it seriously, and it therefore becomes an amusing romp through a series of intentionally absurd scenarios.

This in itself is not enough however, and the actors need to treat the film with just the right amount of enthusiasm to make it work. Caine's acting? He's long been one of my favourites, but in this he doesn't even bother to hide his cockney accent...but who cares! Brilliant acting is not what this film is about, so having Caine in the role becomes an amusement in itself (Caine not even remotely attempting to hide his cockney accent should have tipped off the other reviewers over the intentions of this film). I've never liked Katie Holmes, but in this I thought she was excellent. She had me totally believing in her selfish stupidity, and she appears to have treated this film to a fair degree of effort in bringing her desperate-for-a-man character to life. Odesya also handles herself well, as does Seth Green, and together the four of them manage to make this an entertaining low budget production.

What gets me though is that the other reviewers here seem to have been expecting something greater. Why? The poorly done backdrop of a crowd during Caine's speech made it clear that this film was meant to be a joke, as did his responses to her letters, and I found myself chuckling over the intentional ridiculousness of it all a number of times during the film.

The story is easy to follow, the editing is well handled, the casting was fine, the acting ranged from adequate to really good, so anybody who thinks this film is worth only 1/10 must have only just started watching movies yesterday, having started with Ben Hur. I have seen a hundred films way worse than this, and so I think these low ratings are missing the mark. Trust me, if you recognise the movie for what it's meant to be you should find it fun, and I personally give it a 6/10.