Tatiana (Odeya Rush) is an annoying disaffected teen. She's a bit gothy...but also she seems to try her best to annoy others. In keeping with this personality, it's not all that surprising that she's developed a new pen pal...General Anton Vincent (Michael Caine). Why is this not that surprising? Well, Vincent is a Castro-style dictator of a small caribbean island....just the sort of brutal guy you'd NOT want your daughter corresponding with....ever! They become friends and exchange quite a few letters....and then the weird part begins. When the General is deposed, he has to go into hiding and ends up living in Tatiana's garage! Talk about an unusual plot for a movie!!

I wasn't that excited to watch this movie. After all, it currently has a very anemic overall score of 5.0 on IMDB and most of the reviewers seem disappointed by it. But, I've recently begun trying to watch all of Michael Caine's films, so I bit the bullet and saw "Dead Dictator". Well, in hindsight I do think the score is highly inaccurate...the movie is much worse!

So what did I dislike about the film? Well, the entire premise is incredibly flawed, silly and offensive in many ways. In fact, it makes you wonder WHO thought the film would be a good idea in the first place! Imagine....a comedy where a teen and her really stupid mother hang out with and have good times with a murderous dictator who gets off torturing people!! What if they had made the guy Idi Amin, Fidel Castro or, perhaps, Joe Stalin?! And yet....it is not only meant to be funny but, in some ways, heartwarming!!

Could such a flawed premise have worked? Yes, though it would have been difficult. They really needed to make the comedy MUCH more comedic and funny. But with "Dear Dictator" it looked as if they weren't even sure if it was supposed to be funny, as there isn't much funny in the film. There's also a strange combination of sentimentality which just didn't fit. To make it worse, the dialog was pretty awful at times. Overall, a film that never should have been made in the first place as it really didn't work AND had little in the way of an audience. It didn't work as a disaffected teen film, a comedy, a romance nor as a drama. In fact...it just didn't work.

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.

Rush is the pen pal of South American dictator Caine, who overthrown, comes and stays in her house where he teaches her how to rebel and lead and be her own person.

Enjoyable and often sharp comedy with all 3 leads giving enjoyable performances helped by a lively, irreverent script and some sly swipes at American politics.

Be warned, the scenes where Holmes has her feet sucked by her foot fetishist boyfriend are revolting, unless of course that is your leaning.

This got a very limited release and was inevitably a flop which is a shame. It was never going to win oscars but is underrated and could be seen as cult material in the future. Fingers crossed.