Borat is The Beverly Hillbillies for hipsters. The premise is similar: Set modern primitives from a backwater on the road to Hollywood and watch as cultural confusion ensues. Borat, a media representative from Kazakhstan, interprets a hotel toilet as a small well from which he can wash his face, just as Ellie-Mae Clampett, fresh from the Ozarks, can only assume that an Olympic-size pool is a "cement pond."

Borat, however, has a more serious (and hilarious) agenda. The creation of Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat appears as the classic innocent abroad, with his off-the-peg rayon suit and mangled English. He hails from a peasant-ridden village in Kazakhstan, where taxis are still dependent upon real horsepower and where dentistry is in its infancy. A celebrated Kazakh commentator, Borat and his producer, Azamat (Ken Davitian), are sent off with a small film crew to explore and explain the United States to their fellow citizens. What follows is a mockumentary road trip into the dark heart of the American Heartland with a Kazakh Mutt and Jeff.

Anyone familiar with Cohen's Ali G. character will understand the Borat approach. Cohen specializes in assuming the persona of a dull-normal man who asks unsuspecting people inane or impertinent questions to see how they respond. Once Borat hits America, Cohen makes his way into Republican leaders' offices, small-market TV news stations, Pentecostal revival halls, gun shops, rodeos and formal dinner parties to see how far he can go before his hosts either call the police or start agreeing with some of his lunatic ideas.

A gun-shop owner is happy to suggest the best gun for shooting Jews, while a rodeo impresario readily agrees that hanging gay men is smart policy. Borat also gets roundly applauded in the rodeo ring when he praises George W. Bush's "war of terror." And the existence of women is neatly summed up by three frat rats in a Winnebago.

Cohen's Borat is such a wild cartoon of "other" ethnicity that it's staggering to realize how many spectacularly gullible people he found. This has rankled some American commentators, who desperately point out how serenely long-suffering and, ultimately, polite Cohen's victims are.

This touted tolerance, however, is born from smugness. No one ever asks Borat about Kazakhstan; they're only interested in impressing upon him the greatness of America. The dinner party of Mississippian divines and Bush stalwarts voice their firm belief that, with a little effort, Borat, too, could be Americanized — a dream that's soon shattered when he returns to the table with a Glad Bag of his own feces.

What's being sent up in Borat is the ostentatious disinterest that Americans have in the rest of the world. This is what makes the real Kazakhstan's protest against the film rather touching. They honestly believe Americans have actually heard of them, and will draw negative conclusions about them from this manic comedy. In reality, Kazakhstan might as well be Duck Soup's Freedonia to the majority of Americans, whose college freshmen often find it difficult locating Texas on a general map of the States.

At its anarchic best, especially when a naked and quarreling Borat and Azamat invade a brokers' party, Cohen's film reaches the level of genius (that scene is the ultimate cinematic showdown between a fat and thin comedian — like suddenly catching a stripped and angry Laurel and Hardy in Shortbus).

It's such mayhem that makes Borat a powerful statement. Here's a swarthy, mustachioed foreigner busting into American homes, businesses and churches, and unleashing total chaos. It's what Americans are doing every day in Iraq, but instead of firing bullets Borat is simply lobbing nonsense.