Brooks eases into his rather insane idea by showing how he is being rejected for other work. The unexpected request by the State Department floors him but comes at an opportune time. Off he goes to New Delhi accompanied by two penny-pinching State Department representatives who want to do everything on the cheap.

Turning in a five hundred page report on the experience is a requirement, so Brooks needs a secretary who can help in the writing. There is a series of scenes in which Brooks interviews job applicants, all eminently unqualified and quite funny. Finally, he comes upon a cheerful, pretty, smart and adept young Indian woman, delightfully played by Sheetal Sheth.

The spectacle of Brooks stopping pedestrians and asking what makes them laugh is very funny as a result of the strange responses he gets, including rejections. One man says animals that talk makes him laugh. Brooks is a master of looking surprised or thwarted. As a main gambit, he stages a standup comedy act before an audience in the hope of finding what the people attending think is funny. The experience proves that a comic can bomb in Delhi as well as in New York.

Having just returned from a month in India, I found the use of the locale especially interesting and amusing. As for the content, Brooks is satirizing ideas about cultural interchange, government, boondoggling and even himself.

While much of the film is funny in an easygoing droll manner, the laid back stance of the filmmaker tends to make some of it too tame for its own good. At times one longs for a show of more energy. Yet that is Brooks’ style; he prefers quiet seduction of an audience to bopping it over the head.