Unfortunately writer-directors Lisa Addario and Joe Syracuse can get only so much mileage out of it, and they cede too much screen time to Katie Holmes as the girl's mother.

| Mar 9, 2020

Appropriates and then drains all subversion out of its punk and revolutionary trappings in favor of contrived, melodramatic pap.

| Original Score: 1.75/5 | Jul 20, 2019

Dear Dictator makes you hope for something subversive, and there occasional flashes of potential, but then it always falls back into the easiest, most obvious route.

| Original Score: 3/10 | Jul 2, 2018

While Michael Caine is always fun to watch, unfortunately, the pacing/editing is not on a par with the writing. The satire should have been sharper and more subversive.

| Original Score: 5/10 | May 6, 2018

The film's premise seems loaded with comic possibilities, but silly scenes overwhelm the story. Plus, Michael Caine is dreadfully miscast.

| Mar 24, 2018

Ineffective, intermittently painful attempt at world-weary funny business.

| Original Score: D+ | Mar 21, 2018

Life hacks from a warm and fuzzy dictator. What's not to loathe?

| Original Score: .5/4 | Mar 21, 2018

A fun, breezy 90-minute sit starring actors who certainly aren't looking down on the material as they so easily could have.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 19, 2018

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.

| Mar 16, 2018

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.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Mar 16, 2018

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.

| Mar 16, 2018

Weak comedy about teen, despot has language, sexuality.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 16, 2018

[A] just-shy-of-great teen comedy.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 16, 2018

It's intentionally odd without any apparent goal beyond being odd.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Mar 16, 2018

Pleasant enough to watch, even innocuous, "Dear Dictator" is something that gets worse the more you think about it.

| Mar 15, 2018

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.

| Mar 15, 2018

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.

| Mar 15, 2018

A movie like this needs to commit to its craziness or play things absolutely straight, and Addario and Syracuse want to have it both ways. As a result, Dear Dictator is betrayed by a lack of ideological purity.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 14, 2018

A high school girl and a Caribbean dictator bond, an unlikely team in this sit-comish and feeble attempt at satire.

| Original Score: C- | Mar 14, 2018

The potential comic absurdities of the premise are squandered as soon as the film settles into a tepid coming-of-age tale.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 14, 2018