Taking stupid seriously

For the uninitiated, Borat Sagdiyev is a gawky, overeager Kazakh TV reporter in a bad suit and worse mustache who travels across the United States doing light lifestyle pieces. Neither really Kazakh nor really real, he is the second-most-famous alter ego of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, whose most famous character, the pea-brained "gangsta" interviewer Ali G, has all but famoused himself into oblivion. (It's harder to book Boutros Boutros-Ghali or Newt Gingrich after their handlers finally catch on that a guy who asks Sam Donaldson "Does you remember when two journalists brought down the government over the scandal of 'Waterworld?' " can't be for real.)

Crass, anti-Semitic, homophobic, misogynistic and outrageously impolitic, Borat's cluelessness about how other countries live, talk and think is rivaled only by his ability to sniff out grandiloquence and prejudice. Though they have traits in common -- notably their encyclopedic ignorance and obliviousness to social norms -- Borat is more likable than Ali G. For one thing, he would rather be liked than respected or admired, and his innocence makes his satire stealthy and powerful. If Ali G skewered all that is ridiculous about big media's obsession with "youth culture," from his own absurdly baroque persona to public figures so disconnected they can't spot a parody when it's right in their face, Borat goes after bigger game. The idea, ostensibly, is to extract lessons in sophistication from the most powerful country on Earth for export to a country most Americans couldn't locate on a map. But the outcome is somehow never quite what it should be. He ventures deep into unmediated America, spot-tests some big, surprisingly ambitious sociological theories, then wrestles a fat guy naked.