"BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN" (2006) ..... B ... This movie will doubtless be a smash success at the box office because the teenagers and the young adults of America, the driving force of the entertainment industry, will delight in this kind of puerile humor. This movie is "South Park" raised to the nth degree of vulgarity. To give the devil his due, this film IS wildly inventive and for the most part it is very funny. While it does drag towards the end, Cohen brilliantly mines his Borat Sagdiyev character for all it is worth. There is much that is admirable and likable in the crude innocence of this man, especially when he is thrown into the social mores of American society.

There is a long cinematic history of people who become "fish out of water" when they enter a much higher social milieu due to unforeseen circumstances. "The Beverly Hillbillies"(1962) and "Down and Out in Beverly Hills"(1986) come to mind, but there have been many others. We all love seeing social Neanderthals play the boob but also sometimes besting their betters. Cohen goes further than anyone else in history to bring these societal differences into a painfully sharp focus.

I laughed a lot at the start of this movie and then I found myself laughing at the appalling humor in this movie. Finally, I just ended up being appalled at the low level to which Cohen stoops to find his humor. He tries everything in a scatter-gun approach in a search to offend just about everybody. Admittedly, many of the jokes work well, but far too many are tasteless as well as being crude, vulgar, rude, insensitive and even wrenchingly in-your-face disgusting. In addition, insulting themes of anti-Semitism and misogyny pervade this film.

Is this movie, as some have proclaimed, the funniest movie ever made? Only if you are someone who has never left the high school-frat boy mentality. Those of us who have matured beyond this will wonder as I have wondered about what this says about our popular culture when a movie like this becomes a box office sensation. After leaving the theater, I washed my hands, but what I really wanted to do was to wash my brain.

"Borat" is filled with cheap laughs because it appeals to the lowest common denominator of our intellect. However, great comedies also aim for our hearts, and this movie utterly misses that target. Mel Brooks broke new ground in 1974 with his then-shocking "Blazing Saddles." Both movies cover similar terrain, but my preference is for the earlier movie. (R for pervasively strong, crude, and sexual content including graphic nudity and language. 84 minutes.)