The problem with most films rooted in sketch comedy (see: pretty much every Saturday Night Live movie of the past decade) is that the characters are too one-dimensional to hold up 90 minutes worth of material. Borat Sagdiyev– Sacha Baron Cohen’s clueless, sexist, racist, homophobic faux Kazakhstani TV reporter, whom he originated in sketches on HBO’s Da Ali G Show– has no such issues on this wild road trip into the heart of America. In fact, like a commuter stuck in a traffic jam caused by a train wreck, you’ll likely find it impossible to look away.

The set-up is brilliant: Borat is sent to America to film a documentary about the good ol’ “U.S. and A,” landing in New York completely unaware of our nation’s rules of etiquette. Whether kissing unsuspecting men on the street or letting chickens loose on the subway, Borat is the prototypical fish-out-of-water. What makes his antics all the more hysterical is the fact that he’s one of only two characters in the film who are in on the joke (the other is his rotund producer, played by Ken Davitian).

When he discovers Pamela Anderson via Baywatch reruns, Borat heads off to Cali hoping to woo her, armed only with a junk ice cream truck and an ever-present camera. Along the way he interacts with a broad spectrum of unwitting interview subjects and tackles every taboo subject you can imagine, and the results will leave audiences literally crying with laughter.  He tries to buy a gun specifically for killing Jews (Cohen is Jewish in real life), and only gets turned away because he’s not American. He endures a rodeo owner telling him to shave his moustache so he doesn’t look so much like a Muslim terrorist, then leads the rodeo crowd in a cheer about killing every man, woman and child in Iraq. He goes to a posh dinner party in the South, excusing himself to go to the restroom and returning with his poop in a clear plastic bag. And, perhaps most disgustingly memorable of all, he and his grotesquely obese producer engage in fully nude Greco-Roman wrestling in front of a crowd of mortgage brokers.

Make no mistake: Borat is rude, crude, at times sophomoric and almost always offensive. But it’s also the funniest mockumentary to come along in decades