Directed by Albert Brooks. Starring Albert Brooks and Sheetal Sheth. Rated PG.

Okay, it's true: Albert Brooks's new movie is not called Finding Comedy in the Muslim World. But the looking here isn't very effective, mainly because we don't really go to the Muslim world. And then there's that little problem with the Comedy.

The film's setup is pretty amusing, at least. Playing another slight variation of himself, also named Albert Brooks, the writer-director-star finds himself tasked by the U.S. government to do an in-depth report on what its current chief antagonists (or the perceived ones, anyway) find funny. Maybe the movie is poking fun at State Department ignorance by sending him to India for this mission, but that ethnographic choice-a secular South Asian nation over a Middle Eastern, Arab location-throws things off right from the start.

This isn't to say that the tale is utterly without amusements. Chief among these are easygoing, if rather routine, pokes at the difficulties of maintaining a Hollywood career and of a bureaucracy getting anything done right. The latter comes in the form of two government types (CIA stooges) well played by John Carroll Lynch and Jon Tenney, seen constantly "working on it" through one screwup after another once Brooks gets to India. But this mild brand of humour doesn't add up to big laughs once he starts looking for laughter or plying his own sad-sack shtick on-stage or in the street. It may be one big Delhi out there, but that doesn't mean the locals will get his particular brand of meta-comedy, which essentially makes fun of what isn't funny.

The film's brightest spot comes from Indo-American Sheetal Sheth, playing the star's charmingly naive assistant, but this has virtually nothing to do with the main story. Come to think of it, almost nothing here pays off in relation to stated intentions. Albert Brooks the character can be forgiven for his ignorance in the end, but perhaps Albert Brooks the filmmaker could have had a little more handle on what he actually wanted to say about the world in 2006.