In "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World," Albert Brooks plays a character named "Albert Brooks" who, despite his formidable comic reputation, isn't really doing that well, can't get much work, is eaten by doubts, may be over and isn't sure he deserves to do better, and is really, anyway, too sensitive for the cutthroat realities of big-time showbiz.

Depressed at his failure, "Brooks" is flown to Washington, where he meets with ex-senator and current actor Fred Dalton Thompson, who plays a reliably officious character named "Fred Dalton Thompson." The government, he explains, wants to know people of the Third World, and one way to know people is to learn what makes them laugh. Thus the armature of the piece: The melancholy, unsure "Brooks" will be sent to India -- which is Hindu mostly, but nobody seems to notice -- where he will find out what makes Muslims (and Hindus) laugh.

Well, it turns out what's funny to Muslims isn't much, but what's funny to Protestants is Albert Brooks trying and flailing desperately to get Muslims to laugh. The highlights of "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World" are two stand-up concerts Brooks gave in two shabby venues in the comedy-challenged Third World. The concerts aren't funny. What is funny is "Brooks's" desperate belief in the material and his befuddlement that the women in burqas , the men in robes and sandals, don't think it's funny.

The jokes in "Looking for Humor" are particularly deficient; the structure (setup, sustenance, complication, delivery) isn't impressive. It's not very clever, it's not very charming, there are no boffo sight gags, nobody falls down goes boom. It self-terminates. In fact, the movie doesn't so much end as reach a stopping point and limp hurriedly off-screen, like a bad stand-up chased out by boo birds.

But God, is it funny.

-- Stephen Hunter